Let Me Die In My Footsteps
by Annibal
Summary: Post NRFTW, goes a bit AU fromt here. There's a hole in the world and Sam's filling it as best he can. By picking up hitchhikers. This can't end well...Rated M for language. COMPLETE!
1. Part 1

A/N: Spoilers for No Rest For The Wicked.

This be my first fanfic, of absolutely any kind. That's right, no longer a fanfic virgin. There are original characters, though I try my best to keep it about the boys. As much as I can. So this is just, like, weird, because I always told myself I wouldn't write fanfic, but here I am. Wrote one. Part one of three. Hope you enjoy!

**Let Me Die In My Footsteps**

**Part One**

_There's been rumors of war and wars that have been  
The meaning of the life has been lost in the wind  
And some people thinkin' that the end is close by  
'Stead of learnin' to live they are learning to die._

_Bob Dylan "Let Me Die In My Footsteps"_

Dean has been in Hell for eighteen months and Lilith dead for two when Sam picks up his first hitchhiker. He's on his way to Savannah from Nashville and the constant purr of the engine is vibrating the air into a thick, suffocating silence when he sees the hitcher from half a mile off. Before his logic stops him he's slowing down and pulling off, stopping just in front of the man, who runs to the Impala and hops in.

The rocking of the car and the weight of the hitcher as he sits down feels like betrayal, but only for a minute, because then the man is talking and Sam has to focus on responding and driving at the same time again for the first time in a year and a half.

"Thanks for stopping, man," says the hitcher. He's tall and scruffy and has a crazy flare in his eyes, though it is a grateful crazy flare. Sam can still remember Dean's voice, and only has to refresh it in his memory by dialing Dean's voice mail every once in a while, and in his head Dean's voice is saying, _What, so the job's not crazy enough you gotta add freakin' psychos to the mix?_

_Demons I get…._

Sam asks, "Where're you headed?"

"Far south as ya can take me," says the hitcher.

Sam almost regrets stopping for the guy when he starts talking about, well, _everything_. The hitcher, Tom, or Tommy, or Tommy-Boy like his great aunt Helen used to call him, was fresh out of rehab and on his way to starting over, and Sam can remember a similar conversation back when he hitchhiked to Palo Alto and the normal life that ended about the same as his old life, in a tower of flames and a decade worth of nightmares.

_He hasn't been home in a few days._

Early on in life Sam found that the cheapest rides for hitchers cost only the conversation and your own story.

And the more the hitcher talks, the less they're likely to have to pay a steeper price.

Sam's price isn't anything, but Tom talks a mile a minute and in the end Sam considers picking him up a win. Sam brings him all the way to Atlanta before Tom gets a ride to Miami with a trucker at a rest stop and the silence of the car when he's gone burns in Sam's ears.

Savannah turn out to be _a clusterfuck of epic proportions_, says his inner Dean. Sam doesn't quite end up in the hospital or unconscious but he's dazed and unfocused as he sews thirty stitches into his side where an angry homeowner swiped him with a broken lamp after he clears the angry spirit out of the house, and his head is oozing blood into his eyes from the bookshelf that fell on him.

He bolts as soon as he's good to drive, heading north to Greensboro, where there's been evidence of a werewolf, and he picks up a thin, busty woman a few years his senior on 77 outside Charlotte. She buys him lunch at a diner and when they part ways she's surprised that he never makes a pass at her.

Sam starts to associate names and faces of hitchers with the jobs he works. After the werewolf, that turns out to be a feral dog with rabies, there is Jordan. Jordan's a schoolteacher in Kentucky on his way to a funeral in Chicago. Sam takes him as far as Indianapolis before he catches word of a black dog in Missouri and heads west.

After the black dog and on the way to a haunted post office in Oklahoma there's Humphrey, the Carney. Humphrey comes from a Romani family who crisscrossed the country in a caravan, and he's reuniting with them in San Diego for some festival.

In Texas he has a scare that starts with him picking up a man even bigger than he is wearing sunglasses, which makes him uneasy for reasons that he can't understand.

The guy's at least as old as Dad was, with the same military stiffness and an unkempt mustache. He's the first person Sam hesitates to stop for, but he does.

The guy says he's "just making my way around the country, y'know, seein' the sights and shit like that."

"Hm," says Sam.

Sam can see the guy eyeing him, and it makes him uncomfortable, but not enough to pull over. The guy talks nearly nonstop. He talks about his sister in Fort Lauderdale and the six years he did with the Navy, and the three dogs he's had in the last ten years that have all died suddenly and unexpectedly.

The guy says his name is Gary but the police that arrest him at the next gas station for the rape and murder of a young man in Dallas call him Eustace Malone, and though Sam was sure he could beat the guy in a fight he's also sure he doesn't ever want to have to.

He sets rules for himself.

1. No one after dark.

2. No one wearing sunglasses.

3. No one I can't take on. Easily.

4. Only more than one if it's a man and a woman, not two men, and only more than two if at least one is a child, and never more than three.

5. Trust my gut.

The logical, Dean-voiced part of his brain tells him to just stop altogether. It says, _are you _that_ eager to see me again?_ and _what if the next's a woman in white, retard? The police gonna arrest her for ya, too?_ and _you've taken dumb to a whole knew level, Sammy._

In New Mexico, where a poltergeist is infesting a ranch he picks up Eli, a ranch hand, whose car broke down, and in the same state there's a family of four with a flat tire.

He begins to dread the silence between passengers.

There's a hole in the world where Dean used to fit. Sam tried to patch it first with killing Lilith, and now she's dead. She's not in Hell where she can crawl out again but wherever Azazel went. She left him with a scar across his stomach that looked like knotted licorice and every month or so he dreams of fire and children and babies with abilities.

There's a hole in the world that he tried to fix next with _saving _people, _hunting_ things, _the family business_, but that tears the hole open when he sews his own stitches and the bed closest the door remains empty.

He recalls the six months he'd lived without Dean the first time Dean died, when the human left him and all that remained was the killing and the structure and the cold, and now he can hardly tell himself apart from what he kills sometimes and he knows it's not just the apathy.

_If it's supernatural, we kill it_.

He thinks of getting hotel rooms with just one bed, and organizing the trunk, or selling the Impala because as hard as he tries he can't think of it as a she and he never looks at it beyond locating it in parking lots, but when he does he feels the hole get bigger, not smaller.

He thinks, in the empty stretches along I-40 between Albuquerque and Flagstaff, about getting a dog, one of the strays he sees or the signs of 'Free Puppies' outside farms, but that, like the bed, feels like betrayal, like substitution, like an acceptance that Dean would never sleep in the same anonymous hotel or be his one constant companion in their quest around the continent. The detached logic of his brain says he isn't to that stage yet and the side of him that still expects to see Dean, six-pack in hand, stumble into the motel room at midnight says he'll still get Dean back, somehow, anyhow, as long as he tries and wishes and prays hard enough.

There's a hole in the world that can't be filled or patched or fixed, but it can be covered by strangers and their stories that could carry him away from his own for at least a few more miles, miles that then, at least, he wouldn't just be thinking of the times he'd driven that same road with Dean, or the million roads just like it.

Dean's been gone for two years when Sam picks up Emanuel the wandering priest in Mammoth Lakes, California. By now Bobby has stopped calling, though every now and again Sam gets a letter at his P.O. Box in Wichita.

Emanuel is forty-seven and wears khaki pants and a plaid flannel shirt.

"I ditched the robes way back. People are much less likely to pick up a guy who looks like a psycho cultist that drinks the blood of infants," says Emanuel. "Although it could just as easily be that no one wants to be preached at, nevermind that all I want is a ride so I won't have to walk through Death Valley."

"You walked through Death Valley?" asks Sam.

"Only metaphorically. Faithfully. 'Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I fear no evil.'"

Dean's voice says, _been there, done that._

Emanuel says, "I was actually only a pastor for a few years before I hit the road."

"Oh yeah?" Sam says, and tries not to think of Jim.

"It was the denial. Of what's going on all around us," says Emanuel.

"Of what?"

"You know, demons. Hellspawn. The supernatural. You know, there's a sigil of protection on the trunk and you're wearing an amulet around your neck," says the priest. "You are a hunter, aren't you?"

And it's only a lifetime of training that keeps Sam from slamming on the brakes.

"Oh don't be so surprised," says Emanuel. "It's obvious, but only if you know what to look for. And you scream it. 'Lone Wolf.'"

Sam keeps his eyes on the road.

"Tell you what," says Emanuel. "I'm on my way to bless the water of a town in Washington. They've been having problems with a vengeful spirit that's taken up residence in a public swimming pool. But I've gotten word of a demonic possession in Denver that could be right up your alley."

Sam has an inner alarm blaring. It was the alarm he wishes he'd had when he first met Meg. But there was also something familiar about Emanuel, like Jim, like he knows what the world is hiding.

Like he knows there was something the world is hiding from.

But he doesn't get that feeling that Emanuel is hiding, not anything, so he asks, "What signs have there been?"

"Eyewitness," says Emanuel. "I've got a contact out there, retired hunter by the name of Gaines who saw a guy with black eyes. You know the black. The pitch of Hell."

"I know the black."

"Well, Gaines isn't exactly ready and able to take care of it himself. His was a forced retirement, you know? So he called me, asked me to come take care of it. I was going to head that way after taking care of this spirit, but if you can go there now, it would take a good deal of worrying off of me."

"Have there been killings?"

"Not yet," says Emanuel, "but who wants to wait and see? It's a good day when we killers of evil are prevention and not clean-up, you know?"

Sam barely nods. He can only think of everything he's never been able to prevent. His hands are slick on the steering wheel with sweat. He grips it tighter and tries (_fails_) to not think of Jess and Max and Meg and Ava and Andy and Jake and Caleb and Jim and Dad and Dean and Dean's been gone (_dead_) for more than three years (_three years, three months, six days and twelve hours, not that he's counting, not that there's a clock in his head ticking the seconds and minutes and hours that turned too soon to days and weeks and months. Three years_) and he thinks, yeah, it would be nice to for once, for once, preempt instead of avenge. To not have to talk to the families of victims.

Emanuel asks, "so do you have a job lined up or can you help me out?"

"I can do it," says Sam.

He and Emanuel trade contact info and Emanuel gives Sam Gaines' address in Westminster, a suburb between Denver and Boulder. They part ways at a rest stop outside Sacramento where Sam veers East on I-80 and Emanuel gets a ride towards Washington on 5.

The road waves into the sky in the heat, and the sight is hypnotizing on the long stretches of nothing through Nevada and Utah. In the heat of summer the sky looks as orange as the earth. Sam takes I-80 through to Cheyenne before heading south on I-25.

From where Gaines lives Sam can see the skyline of Denver in the distance through a thick haze. It takes some doing to find Gaines' house. It's on a hill near a small airport, squished into that tight kind of suburbia that gives Sam twinges of jealousy like an ulcer burning in his stomach.

He parks the Impala along the curb and tucks his gun into the back of his pants as he climbs out of the car.

The house looks normal. It's white and the lawn is well trimmed, if a bit brown. There is a wooden ramp leading up to the front door over the stairs and it creaks and sinks as Sam walks up it. The doorbell echoes softly inside. Mounted on the door Sam recognizes a protective seal that keeps out harmful entities. _Think you'll even be able to go inside, Sammy?_

He hears the creaking of floorboards inside and a blur through the mottled glass around the door. A peephole has been installed about three feet above the ground. There is a pause, but then the door opens.

Gaines is in a wheelchair, is around Bobby's age, and his left hand is hidden behind the door where Sam's sure the man's got a weapon ready to use.

"Mister, uh, Gaines?"

"Uh-huh, that's me. You Sam?"

"Yes."

"Sam Winchester, right? You and your brother let loose Hell a few years back?"

"That's, um, that's me, yes."

"Emanuel called from Oregon somewhere," says Gaines. "Said you might show up."

They stare at each other in silence. A dog barks down the street.

"Well," says Gaines, "I suppose you should come in."

He opens the door all the way and rolls backwards to let Sam inside. Sam glances at the seal before stepping through the entryway. Gaines doesn't let go of the shotgun he's got, but he's holding it more out of habit than threat.

"I saw the demon just a few blocks from here on the street," says Gaines. "On Aspen Lane. It's possessing the body of a woman, short redhead with two kids. Husband's working all the time, so I'm not sure if anyone else's noticed."

"You staked it out?"

Gaines snorts. "That's 'bout all I can do, now." He taps his leg with the shotgun.

"How did—?"

"How did I get paralyzed?"

"If you don't mind me—"

Gaines shrugs. "Not even close. Was a stupid thing, totally my fault, you see? I went in blind. Up in the mountains, 'round Rocky Mountain National Park, a bunch of hikers and cross-country skiers were going missing and never found. Not too uncommon, really, but it always happened at the same time—the full moon. I thought it was a werewolf, see, but it wasn't. A man had been killed up there a while back and he was getting revenge for something, you know, the usual dumbass sort of spirit thing where they've misplaced all their rage and blah blah blah. Anyway, I was prepared for a werewolf, not a spirit. It got the drop on me, shoved me off a trail into a little ravine. It was only luck someone else came along and found me."

Gaines harrumphs.

"The shit thing of it is," the man says, "the spirit killed another fellow while I was recovering, before I could salt and burn the guy's bones. Emanuel helped me with that one.

"It just goes to show, eh? The full moon was just a coincidence, not even the time of month the guy was originally killed. This job, it's crazy. As soon as something makes sense, run."

Sam frowns. "How do you mean?"

"Well, way I see it, once you think you know anything the world will up and show you that you know jack shit."

_Fuckin' story of my life_, says Dean in Sam's head.

"Do you know why this demon is here? Is it doing anything?"

Gaines shakes his head. "Not really doing much of anything. She takes the kids to school, makes food, takes out the trash. She works as a nurse at St. Anthony's, over on 84th, and as far as I can tell she hasn't missed a shift. I know the doctors there."

"And you're sure she's possessed?"

Gaines looks at Sam like he's a moron, and Sam drops it.

"Her shifts are Monday, Wednesday and Friday, eight to eight. Best to wait until tomorrow to do anything, since Tuesdays she stays home. On Tuesdays she doesn't leave the house once she takes the kids to school, and the husband leaves for work at eight-thirty. So that's a window from nine A.M. to three-thirty, when the kids are dropped off by the bus."

Sam nods. He knows getting inside probably wont be too hard. Demons haven't scared him since Lilith.

"Tomorrow it is," he says.

"Now, if you don't mind me asking, what happened?"

"What happened when?"

"At the gate. Word's gotten round, boy. But it hasn't been the good kind of word, you know? Just word from demons here and there. Word no hunter can really trust, though some morons do."

Sam sighs. His chest feels like it's melting like plastic in a fire, and phantom pain stabs through his back.

"It's a long—"

"Kid, everything's a long story in this line of work. I showed you mine, you show me yours. And besides, you're here helping me. I'm not going to shoot you or anything if I don't like what I hear."

_Yeah, he says that now_, Sam hears Dean's voice. _Just wait till he finds out you're a freak, Sammy._

"There was this demon," Sam says, "who wanted this gun we had, and it turned out to be a key to this door and the demon possessed this guy to open the door for him and we failed to stop them."

"The brevity of that story leaves me thinking you're hiding a lot, kid, and the only place to hide is in the dark," says Gaines.

Sam looks at him, bemused. "Did that even make sense?"

Gaines slaps his unmoving leg and laughs.

"From the stories I heard about you I'd been thinking you were some sort of sociopathic psycho, Winchester, but you're not half bad. We've all got secrets, I guess."

Sam shrugged.

"Anyway, it's getting late. I've got a guest room if you want it. And a couple of exorcisms I have marked in my library, if you need them."

"I don't need the exorcisms, but I would appreciate the room," says Sam.

He ends up cooking dinner for Gaines, after he finds out the guy lives on microwave dinners. "Cooking in a wheelchair is a major pain in the ass," says Gaines, "which is impressive since I can't even feel mine."

Gaines shows him the house in the gray light of twilight. They stroll—or, at least, Sam strolls and Gaines wheels himself along in some semblance of strolling—through the neighborhood. The house to the demon's left is painted yellow, with a "For Sale" sign in the yard and a post with brochures. A car is in the driveway but all the blinds are shut. On the other side toddler toys are strewn across the driveway and yard, a red tricycle, a pogo stick, chalk. Gaines tries to help Sam come up with some sort of plan of attack and Sam doesn't tell him it isn't necessary.

The bed in the guest room is lumpy but feels like heaven after all the motels, and Sam sleeps as soundly as he ever has, which isn't very much, but in the morning he feels rested.

He leaves at nine, just walks over to the house on Aspen Lane and rings the doorbell. The kids and the husband are gone, and when the wife answers the door he knows she's a demon only because he is exactly the freak Dean used to say he was.

He says, "Step inside," and she does. He enters after her, and when she shuts the door behind them her eyes are black and furious.

"Well, if it isn't Sammy Winchester," she says. "What a surprise meeting you here. It's been a while, hasn't it?"

"Meg."

"In the flesh." She stands with one hand on her hip, tilted to one side. "Although, for your information, my name is not Meg. Never has been—that belonged to the meat-suit I was so rudely evicted from."

Sam waves one hand and pins Meg to the wall of the front hallway.

"Picked up some fun knew skills, did we?" Meg hisses, "Good to know Father did some things right."

Sam sneers. "He didn't."

Meg grins, a demonic grin incongruous with the possessee's body. She laughs.

"That's what you think, Sammy-boy! You're right on the path Father had hoped. You're just a few years slower than anticipated."

Sam rolls his eyes. He says, "So when did you escape Hell? Through the Gate?"

Meg smiles a Cheshire-Cat smile. "You'd be surprised how easily escapable Hell truly is. I just happen to know all the cracks."

There is silence in the room. Then Sam says, "What are you doing here, Meg?"

"I told you, my name isn't Meg." She strains her arms to free herself from the invisible force (_Sam_) but in vain.

"And I told you to _tell me what you're doing here_." His voice takes on a reverberating, intenseness. It doesn't change, but the power it presented did.

Meg looks strained. She grits the woman's teeth and clenches shut her eyes. But she loses her battle. Her black eyes glaze and her whole body relaxes as she opens her mouth to speak.

"I am looking for someone," she says.

"Who?"

"A chosen child."

"Chosen?"

"Like you. Chosen by father."

Sam pauses. He crosses his arms, pensive. "There's more of us?"

"Yes."

"I thought they were all killed at Cold Oak?"

"No. Only those who were ready to compete."

Sam narrows his eyes.

"How many more are there?"

"Only Father knew," says Meg. "He made as many as he thought necessary. _Genetic diversity_."

She sneers the last sentence as though it's gasoline in her mouth.

"And there's one of them here?"

Meg doesn't answer.

"_Tell me where the child is_," says Sam. He doesn't feel powerful. Usually he just feels dirty.

"He's anywhere within ten miles of here! I can't find him! You think I'd be prancing around in this _flowery_, _nursing,_ human _puppet_ if I knew where he was?"

Sam arches an eyebrow. He smiles at her frustration, unable to quench the vindictive pleasure he feels from her pain.

"So it's male, then? And why do you want to find him so badly?"

"To kill you!" Meg snarls. "To train him to maim and torture a kill and _destroy_ you, _Sammy_!"

She wrenches an arm from the wall and makes a mad swipe at his head. Sam takes a step backwards but keeps an impassive face.

"Why can't you find him?"

Meg peels her other arm from the wall.

"He keeps—_aargh!_ —He keeps moving around! I can't pin him down! There's too much _interference_! Gurargh! How are you doing this!"

Sam stands like a lion, poised and ready to hunt, and says, "Haven't you heard?" He smiles a jackal's grin. "I'm your King."

She breaks free. She lunges at him.

Sam sighs and says, "_Go to Hell_."

And she does.

Only briefly Sam wonders what her name really is. He figures he'll find out next time he sees her.

He calms the woman who was possessed, and she's so freaked he figures she'll chalk the whole experience up to too much coffee and stress within a week.

He only goes back to Gaines' house to grab his stuff and the car. Gaines wants to know, blow by blow, how it went, but Sam just tells him it was nothing. He gets a room at the nearest hotel, and researches fires in the area between the present and twenty-five years ago, but he finds nothing of suspicion in Denver or the surrounding area, and any trail that ever could have been is long gone. Without Ash he really can't track the Special Children, and with Azazel gone he doesn't see the point in trying. Maybe this child can live the normal life Sam used to crave.

He heads east.

He gives more rides, gains more scars. He picks up a man who only speaks in movie quotes.

"So where are you trying to get to?"

"Somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert."

"…That's the opposite direction…."

"We can't stop here! This is bat country!"

Another hitcher tallies road kill. There are runaways and castaways, people on quests and freaks looking for vindication. There are too many wayfarers to count and they all make Sam feel normal.

He sees Jo once, from afar, and doesn't approach her even after he knows she's seen him. He disappears—it's what he's good at—and if she ever looks for him he doesn't stick around to find out.

He visits Rufus Turner in Canaan, Vermont. He brings a handle of Johnny Walker Blue and while Rufus isn't the best of company, in next to no time Sam's drunk like a freshman's first shot and barely together.

The man tells him to, "fuckin' pull yourself together, this is ridiculous," and Dean's voice in Sam's head agrees.

"Bobby called a month ago," says Rufus. "He asked if I'd seen you."

"Unca' Bobby?"

"Mmm-Hmm. Seemed to think you'd eventually find your way here."

"Wha?"

"That's what I said. Before I told him if you were stupid enough to come here for help I'd boot you out on your ass and send you his way."

"But I brought tha booze!"

Rufus takes a generous swig of the alcohol. "Which is why I'm letting you sleep it off on my couch tonight before I send you on your way."

Sam and his brain, whenever he is intoxicated, refuse to see eye-to-eye. He knows there is a reason he came all the way to _Vermont_, which is only one step above Maine and below Florida on Sam's list of places he never wants to visit twice. He knows there's a reason he came to Rufus. Rufus deals in things. He has connections. Like Bela.

Sam knows he needs something.

Which is what he tries to tell Rufus.

"I need something," he says. Rufus has already tossed a ratty old afghan at his head (_Dude, Afghan? What the Hell's an afghan and why do you think it's a blanket_?), and Sam's buried into the couch.

"No shit," says Rufus.

When Sam wakes up in the morning his head is splitting and there's a book next to the table. A note on the cover, in a messy cursive scrawl that Sam assumes is Rufus's, says, "_You might find something you need in here. Now get out of my house before I wake up and kick your ass all the way to Bobby's._"

Sam takes the book and leaves. He doesn't go to Bobby's. He tosses the book over to the passenger side where it slides beneath the seat.

The roads are endless, and even when Sam's sure he's driven every road in the country, been coast to coast twice in a week, there's a new road and a new ghost and a new problem, and death, and even though it's different every road and ghost and problem and death feels exactly the same.

A year passes in a day, a rush of people and places and in the haze of days Sam lost Dean's voice. He could listen to Dean's old voicemail for hours but there were only those words, and Sam couldn't hear Dean talking, actually saying anything anymore. Even in Sam's memories whatever Dean said had a warped sound that was mostly Sam's voice.

He can't hear what the sound of Dean's voice was, anymore, but he can sometimes hear the words. Dean saying, "You should know how to fix it," and "You're not acting like yourself anymore," and "What you're doing is not going to save me" and "Keep fighting."

Now he only calls Dean's voicemail when he can't sleep in the dark morning hours and he turns over to see the empty bed nearest the door.

The whole in the world where Dean used to be gets bigger, like a canyon being carved out by the pouring torrent of time and the weight of new memories and a life Sam never wanted.

Sam isn't quite sure what drives anymore, during those cross-country treks. He often emerges from a daze with a hundred miles gone and a glaze over his eyes, when a hundred miles before he let the passing white lines of the interstate hypnotize him.

He avoids South Dakota and the last he heard from Bobby was six months ago when he got a letter in his P.O. Box that just said, "Moron."

He picks up Emanuel again just outside Prophetstown, Illinois and doesn't realize until later the irony of it.

"Gaines was impressed by you," says the priest. He's on his way to Bozeman, and Sam's on his way anywhere.

"He was?"

"Sure," says Emanuel. "He said you've got a good head on your shoulders, and if you're a bit weird, it's no more so than the rest of us freaks in the night. That's what he said, verbatim, I think."

Sam is silent, like always. Emanuel doesn't notice. No one really does.

"He's good people."

"Yeah, he is," says Sam.

Emanuel taps his fingers on his knee. "So you got a job going?"

"No."

"Do you want one?"

"Sure."

"Great. Just yesterday I found evidence of a haunting on a road just outside Grand Junction. It's right on your way, I think. You're just headed west, right?"

Sam nods.

"No destination or reason in mind," says Emanuel. "I like it."

Sam shrugs.

"Or maybe you've got the reason part, it's just the destination that's a mystery. That's okay; I'm just talking, anyway. We all just do what we do."

Emanuel laughs.

"So it's been, what, a year since we last met? Weird that we meet up again, eh? Fate, maybe, not that that really makes a difference one way or another. Whether by free will or fate things happen. I don't much care to think about if it's one over the other that gets it done. So what have you been up to this last year? Just the same? Me too. Spreadin' the good word and the good will."

Emanuel sighs.

"Trying to make a dent in the world. Nothing really ever changes though, does it? No matter what we do people will still sin and hold ill will towards their fellow man, and no matter how many demons we exorcize or spirits we destroy more are always popping up."

Sam doesn't know what he could add to the conversation besides, "well no shit," and that doesn't seem like the thing to say at the moment.

So he shrugs.

Iowa passes by like a never-ending occurrence of deja vu. Nebraska is huge. Every time Sam drives across it he thinks it gets bigger, like it's adding area to support the girths of its population.

Emanuel leaves him at North Platte. The priest will head north at Cheyenne and Sam heads southwest on I-76. He gets to Grand Junction just in time to save a local woman from the ghost, which blows out tires and crashes trees into its victims, and even though they're the spindly, weak looking pines of the western slope they're more than enough to crush someone.

He sleeps with her, and in the morning when he wakes up next to her in her home, in her bed, and he can't remember her name or why he was attracted to her the night before he sneaks out and drives away. She was gorgeous, but that was about it, and Sam wishes he could be more like Dean and not have to justify a one-night-stand to himself, because _fuck_ he's lonely. And maybe just for a few minutes (_well, more than a _few) he likes not feeling like he's the only one on the planet.

Like he's got the whole world balanced between his shoulder blades, pushing down on him, taking for granted that he'd always be there to hold it.

He wonders who, exactly, would notice if he were gone.

Dean's been dead for four years and Lilith for two years and eight months when Sam picks up Calvin outside of Denver on I-76.

Sam's as old as Dean ever was.

Four years have passed since Dean died and Sam thinks he should know better than to get attached to anyone else, but the kid's got the one thing that could fix everything. There's a hole in the world where Dean used to fit, and Sam finds a way to fix it on an interstate in Colorado.


	2. Part 2

A/N: Part two, of three. I originally started this to be a simple one-shot of Sam dealing with Dean being in Hell, and somewhere during writing it turned into a digression of plotful proportions, so that was fun and time consuming. Fun times. Two parts to go. Will be up tomorrow. Thanks for reading!

**Let Me Die In My Footsteps**

**Part Two**

_Let me drink from the waters where the mountain streams flood  
Let me smell of wildflowers flow free through my blood  
Let me sleep in your meadows with the green grassy leaves  
Let me walk down the highway with my brother in peace._

_Bob Dylan "Let Me Die In My Footsteps"_

"Hey, thanks for stopping, man," says the kid. He's no older than twenty, no younger than eighteen. Sam wonders if this is how he looked to all the people who picked him up when he hitched his was to Palo Alto.

"I'm trying to get up to Crivitz, Wisconsin," says the kid. "How far're you going?"

Sam says, "I can get you as far as Des Moines," even though he could probably just drive the kid the whole way there since he's got no where to be and there's always fun times to be had in America's Dairyland.

"That would be great." The kid leans over, shakes Sam's hand. "Name's Calvin."

Calvin's a lean five foot seven, with wavy dirty blond hair and a look in his eyes that sees into forever. Sam doesn't quite know what to make of it, because most of the hitchers he picks up are either crazy or jaded. Calvin's just got some sort of gratitude towards life that Sam hasn't seen since before his dad died. And then it was in Dean.

Sam hates the kid already.

Calvin asks, "So, what's your name?"

"Sam."

"Hey, I've got a cousin named Sam. She's a girl, though."

"Great."

"So what's in Des Moines?"

"What?"

"I mean why are you going there? That is where you're going, right?"

"Yeah. What's in…?" Sam can't remember where the Hell the kid's going. Wisconsin somewhere.

"Crivitz. It's a couple hours north of Green Bay. My family's got a cabin on a lake, and we have a reunion there every year."

Sam glances at the kid. "You're hitchhiking to a family reunion?"

"Yep! My parents and little sisters are all already there, they flew out earlier."

"Why didn't you fly with them?"

Calvin shrugs. "I dunno. I had some stuff to do. And I would drive out there myself, but gas is a bitch right now and I'm not sure my car'd make it."

Sam thinks it's Colorado, maybe. There are always people like this that he meets in Colorado. In all of the west, really. The west breeds dreamers and romantics. He sighs.

"Wow, man this car has a ton of miles on her, doesn't she?"

Calvin's leaning over looking at the driver side dash. He's got a hyperactivity like a gerbil on speed and Sam thinks Dean would like this kid.

Sam frowns and his chest tightens.

"I've got 243,000 miles on my car, about, but you've got, what, three times that many? How many were on the car when you got her?"

"My dad got her new."

"Family car, huh?" Calvin says, "My dad gave me my car, too. You know, with the amount of mileage this car's done you could drive to the moon, and back, and then back to the moon again. That can't be cheap, can it?"

"No, it's not," says Sam, and he doesn't mean money.

"So is your family in Des Moines?"

Sam bites his lip. At this rate he'll kick the kid out of his car before they even cross into Nebraska.

"No," he says.

"Business, then?"

"Sure."

"That's cool. So what kind of car is she? Seems like a classic."

"It's a '67 Impala."

"Sweet. Mine's a '97 Subaru Outback. Not quite as awesome as a car like this, but she probably gets way better gas mileage."

"Probably," says Sam. He wishes the kid would shut the Hell up about family and cars and the goddamn moon, so he asks, "You in college?"

Sam realizes as soon as he voices question that it wasn't the most brilliant thing he's ever done, because it just made him think of Jess and Calvin starts talking about the future, which is the thing Sam hates most right now besides Calvin and the rest of the world.

"Yeah, I guess so. Well, it's summer, so I'm not in classes, but I'm in school to be a pilot."

For a second Sam actually grins at this, remembers a voice humming Metallica, but then it's gone.

"A pilot? Like, United, or what?"

"Sure, yeah, whatever. I just like flying. I'm happy as long as I'm in the air."

Of all the hitchhikers Sam's picked up over the last two and a half years he thinks Calvin is the most conversational. He's not the most talkative, but he asks questions that he actually expects Sam to answer and Sam doesn't feel comfortable with that.

"So what do you do, Sam?"

"Not much."

"Oh, come on, if you can afford to put over seven hundred thousand miles on a car you've gotta be doing something!"

"I work in sales," says Sam.

"Selling what?"

"Computers."

"Really? Computers? Apples or PC's? Because my Mac just crapped out on me a few weeks ago."

"No, it's more like, er, hardware. For computers. Like, chips and stuff."

"Oh," says Calvin. "Too bad. And you, what, travel the country selling computer chips?"

"Er, yeah."

"Huh." Calvin goes silent, and it's the first break in conversation for miles. The kid stares out the window, tapping his fingers absently on the seat.

Kearney comes and goes in silence, and when they stop for gas Calvin insists on getting lunch for Sam. Sam's not really hungry, he doesn't really ever feel hungry any more, but Calvin looks so eager to be able to pay Sam back somehow for picking him up that Sam can't refuse, and when they're on the road and he's eating what may be the best cheeseburger he's had in years he's grateful for the kid.

It's no revelation or anything but in the miles between Kearney and Omaha he starts to like the kid, and he hasn't liked anyone (_and here he has to silent the still snarky if not Dean-voiced Dean in his brain, because, no, Dean, he doesn't _like _him like him_) since Gaines and that was more respect and pity than any sort of fondness.

He's been doing his best in the past four years to avoid any liking of anyone.

So now he's trapped in a paradox of liking the kid and hating him at the same time for being endearing in an off the wall, ADHD sort of way.

Stupid kid.

But they somehow get on the topic of ghosts, in the conversations that flow a bit easier now that Sam isn't trying as hard as he was to quell them as before, and they went from the topics of what makes a movie a classic….

("It's an art form," says Sam, "anything that's looking to say something more than just 'look, explosions and crappy effects!' Like Citizen Kane." To which Calvin says, "what are you, a fifty year old woman? It's gotta have _vision_!" And Sam's got no idea what the Hell that means, but they end up agreeing on _The Shawshank Redemption _as pretty much the best movie ever, followed by _One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest_ and Sam's never even seen most of the other movies Calvin brings up.)

…And into a discussion about prisons, and how easy, or not, it would be to break out of them, because Calvin thinks he could probably do it a lot faster than Tim Robbins and Sam, on the grounds of not wanting to promote youthful debauchery, insists that it wouldn't be easy at all, no not at all.

From prisons it went to NASA, and a philosophical debate over what, exactly, freedom is, which devolves into pop culture, which takes a turn back to movies, in this case horror movies, and Calvin, much to Sam's chagrin, brings up the realism in them.

"You know, my house is haunted," says Calvin.

"Really," says Sam, because how many people in the world think their house is haunted when it's just natural settling or pests?

"Yup, my mom's house. How about you? Ever seen a ghost before?"

Sam grins and says, "Nope, can't say I've ever see a ghost."

"That's too bad. It's actually kind of cool," says Calvin. "Not like some other things."

Sam doesn't want to get into this, not ever, and not with someone who really has no clue what's out there. He wonders if Dean's right, if laymen should know, be able to prepare themselves. But no, really, if Sam had a choice he knows he would not wish this knowledge on anyone.

"There's actually two, in the house, but one's my old cat that died like, ten years ago so she doesn't count. The other one's this creepy little kid that stares into the basement through the door of our Jacuzzi room. It's got this window in it, and I swear, nothing is more creepifying than looking over there and seeing just the top half of this boy peering at you. It's all very _the Grudge_, only the real one, not that crappy remake with Buffy. _Ju On_, I think."

"Sounds freaky."

"Naw, it's not too bad, once you get used to it," says Calvin. "So, do you even believe in ghosts?"

Sam shrugs.

"I get ya. It's not really something anyone can believe in unless they've seen it, right?"

"Sure."

"The funniest thing, though, is that it scares the shit out of my sisters. They can't even go into the basement if they're alone. They get all squealy." Calvin laughs at a memory Sam can't see but Sam's got his own, and there's a million of them.

"Do you have any siblings?" Calvin asks.

"I used to."

"Oh. Sorry."

They both stare out at the road ahead. It stretches on, slightly curved. Des Moines isn't far. The silence lasts fifty, then a hundred miles, and they're in Des Moines and Calvin's thanking Sam for the ride, and Sam's got no where to go and no one to save right then so, just like with the first hitchhiker he picked up two and a half years ago he's making a decision before he realizes it, and he says, "Wait."

Calvin looks at him, a kind of sad look, like he's not sure about himself around Sam anymore after so much silence.

"Yeah?"

"Get back in, I can take you the whole way to…."

"Crivitz."

"To Crivitz."

Calvin furrows his eyebrows like he's debating whether or not he thinks Sam'll slit his throat and dump his body, but Sam figures he comes to the conclusion that if Sam had wanted to kill him he'd have done it in the middle of Nebraska where no one would notice and before he'd given him the chance to leave. He gets back in the car.

They head north on I-35 and stop for the night in Albert Lea. Calvin's talking less, like he's talked himself out or he feels too awkward to talk. Sam gets a hotel room, two beds, like usual. He freezes, feels his heart constrict and try to rebel up his throat when Calvin claims the bed furthest from the door.

He stands, staring at the bed and it's putrid green quilt that he's always thought of as _Dean's_ and _that's Dean's bed, what the fuck am I supposed to do now_?

"Sam? Hello, earth to Sam?"

Sam looks up and Calvin's on his cell phone, looking at him like he's expecting something.

"What?"

"I said, I'm ordering pizza. What d'you want on it?"

Sam tosses his bag on Dean's bed, sighs, then says, "Pepperoni."

Calvin finishes ordering and hits end, but keeps his phone open and dials a speed dial. He holds the phone to his ear, and even across the room Sam can hear the ring through the silence.

A muffled voice answers on the other end.

"Hey, mom, what's up?"

Sam flops back on Dean's bed, letting his legs dangle from his knees and his feet rest on the floor.

"Yeah, I'm fine…No, I haven't been raped…Albert Lea…it's in, um, Minnesota…yeah, I'll get there tomorrow…just two…one out to 76 from Westminster, and one to here…no, I've got a ride the whole way, I think…yeah, Sam. He's cool…no, mom, you'll meet him when he drops me off…you really don't have to…okay, fine."

Calvin says the last word like it's a surrender and Sam glances over at him. Calvin holds the phone out his way.

"My mom wants to talk to you," says Calvin, and Sam wonders when he entered the Twilight Zone because this could count as one of the weirdest things that's happened to him.

He sits up and takes the phone, heart thumping like a virgin on prom night.

"Hello?"

"Is this Sam?"

The voice is not what he expected. She's not shrill, or harsh-sounding. She just sounds like a mother, and there's no other way Sam can describe it.

"Yes."

"And you're driving my son here?"

"Yes. To, er, Crivitz, right? Couple hours north of Green Bay?"

"One and a half," says Calvin's mother.

"Okay."

"Do you need directions?"

"Um, sure," says Sam, though Calvin's rolling his eyes and holding up a GPS that he's had stashed in his backpack. Sam writes down the directions as Calvin's mother gives them. When she's done he repeats them back to her. It's to assuage her fears, he knows, more than actual need.

"When can we expect you?" asks Calvin's mother.

"Um," Sam looks at Calvin, who shrugs. "I'm guessing around noon? Maybe a little after."

"Okay. And you'll stay for dinner, of course."

Sam says quickly, "No, that's really not necessary—"

"Don't be impolite!" She has a smile in her voice now, and Calvin's snickering at him. "We're having spaghetti. We'll have enough for a small country, really, you'll be doing us a favor!"

"Okay…."

Calvin's laughing at him openly now.

"Excellent, we'll see you tomorrow. Please put my son back on, would you?"

"Sure." He tosses the phone to Calvin. The kid catches it and holds it back to his ear.

"Yeah, mom, I'll be fine, we'll see you soon…you would, mom…okay, bye…yep, love you too…_bye_, mom."

Calvin snaps the phone shut. He looks at Sam and rolls his eyes. "Moms, you know?"

Sam shrugs.

Calvin's phone rings once more when the pizza arrives, and the two of them devour it in minutes. They end up watching _Frailty _on TV, which, really, Sam can't watch without sinking into a swirling abyss of depression. He falls asleep before the end, and when he wakes up at two AM the TV's still on. Calvin's asleep, the remote loose in his hand. Sam takes it and flips through channels until a show about hairstylists puts him to sleep at four.

The next time he wakes up the shower's running. He looks at the clock and wonders what the Hell Dean's doing in the shower at seven in the morning when they don't even have a job to get to.

He sits up, and rubs a hand down his face, trying to wipe away some of the sleep that clings to him.

He looks around the room for a minute. He doesn't want to be awake yet. The bed farthest from the door has a bag on it and….

Oh.

Right.

Sam's shoulders slump.

They're on the road by eight. Calvin's talking, and trying to make conversation, but Sam's answers have reverted to a monosyllabic state.

They get fifty miles before Calvin breaks.

"So what's wrong?"

"Nothing."

Sam can see Calvin watching him out of the corner of his eye but he keeps his face impassive and watches the road.

"You're all…Hulkish."

"Hulkish?"

"Yeah," says Calvin, "Or, I dunno, Neanderthalian. Or something."

Sam casts him a bemused glance, but doesn't say anything.

"See! That's exactly it! You're all…grunty. And grumpy. You're like this roommate I had last year, I don't think I ever heard him say more than one word at a time.

"So…you wanna talk about it?"

Calvin's tense and fidgeting with the hem of his shirt, and his foot's wiggling. He seems, right then, like a third grader and Sam wonders how long it took for Dad to break him of that. He wonders what he would be like if that November night in 1983 had been just like any other.

"No," he says.

Calvin relaxes. "Thank God," he says. "I'm no good with feelings and shit."

Sam loosens up a bit, as the miles go by. They reach Bloomer by ten, Wausau by eleven. They stop for gas then, and while Sam's filling the tank Calvin cleans the bugs and grime off the windshield. They're getting back on the road when Calvin reaches down below the seat.

"Hey," he says, "what's this?"

He pulls out a book. It's the one he got from Rufus, a year ago.

"'_Gateways to Hell_,'" reads Calvin. "By Samuel Colt."

"Yeah, it's, uh, research," covers Sam. "For a book I'm writing."

Calvin has gone pale. He's got the book open to a page of exorcisms, is flipping through pages as though he's looking for something.

"What?" Sam reaches for the book. Calvin lets him take it, and Sam tosses it in the backseat.

Calvin watches it go. "Huh? Oh, it's nothing. Just deja vu, I guess."

Calvin stares at his hands.

"Just deja vu."

One hour out Calvin calls the cabin, but no one picks up.

"That's weird," he says. "There's like, twenty-five people there, and no one answers? They must be water skiing."

"All of them?"

"Well, yeah. It's a big deal to all of them. That and tubing. And fishing."

Calvin's telling Sam about year after year of this reunion, and the closer they get to the cabin on the lake the more Sam realizes he's actually looking forward to meeting these people.

"There's my grandparents, who rock. They're just like, normal old people. Way laid back. Grandpa's a wiseacre. My second cousin Barry—oh man, you do _not_ want to see him on a jet ski. We're talking full moon. Like, hairy full-moon. And my cousins. Most of them are younger than me, and the most obnoxious little cretins, but they're cool."

The north Wisconsin roads are rolling, straight and lazy and driving on them is almost therapeutic. The trees line the highway in rows, planted years and years ago, green and lush. The land has a glacially eroded smoothness, hills that are small and like waves in a calm ocean. Sam doesn't usually get the chance to appreciate landscapes, always on the way to another tragedy, but he likes this.

Calvin's excitement is contagious.

"And you all do this every year?"

"Oh yeah," says Calvin. "My grandparents've owned this thing since, like, the fifties. Actually, I don't think I even missed the year I was born. Oh! There it is, turn right here."

The driveway to the cabin is dirt, and caged by green. They pull through the trees into a clearing, where a white, house-sized cabin and a red double-wide sit near a small shoreline of a smallish lake, much smaller than the last lake in Wisconsin he'd been to years before. He parks the car between a black sedan and a white SUV, but Calvin's already climbing out. He face looks drawn and bemused.

Sam asks, "What's wrong?"

"No one's here."

"The cars…."

"Yeah, but there's usually people outside, in the water. Eating lunch at the picnic table."

"Are they inside?"

Calvin's striding towards the white cabin. Sam's gut turns and his instincts flare warnings like foghorns through his body.

"Calvin, stop," he says, and leaves no room for debate. Calvin hesitates and turns back to him.

Sam tucks his handgun into his jeans, hiding it behind his shirt, and grabs a water gun. He walks to where Calvin is waiting and hands him the squirt gun.

"What's this…?"

"Just stay behind me," says Sam.

As soon as Sam opens the front door he wishes he hadn't.

"Fuck," he says.

"What? What are you—?" Calvin pushes past him. Immediately the kid jolts back like he's been shot, and his knees give out. Sam catches him and pushes Calvin behind him.

"I said stay behind me. Don't come in."

Sam walks further into the cabin. His shoes squeak on the wet tile. They squish into the carpet.

Inside the cottage is red. Bright, congealing red, glistening and dripping from the ceiling and pooling on the ground and running down the walls.

Calvin's family is dead. All of them, even the baby. They line the walls, crucified, throats cut and drained of blood. On the cabinets of the little kitchen still wet blood spells, "_HE'S THE ONE. KILL HIM._"

The kid shoves passed him again, and takes three running steps into the room.

"Calvin, don't."

Calvin's dropped the squirt gun, but Sam knows the Holy water it contains is useless, anyway. Whatever, whoever did this is gone. Not by long, but gone. Sam feels frozen. He watches Calvin collapse next to a woman, whose once-blond hair is streaked in crimson, her eyes open and blank. Calvin shakes her, says, "Mom?" and when she topples forward he scoots back and throws up.

"No no no nonono," he says, "What the fuck! What—no, what is this?"

The kid's crying. He stumbles and plops onto the couch, covering his mouth with his bloody hand and streaking the fluid on his face. Sam circles the room, checking everyone. All dead.

"This is…this is everyone," says Calvin. "This is everyone and they're all…."

Sam looks at Calvin, whose eyes that stared into forever aren't anymore, they're staring straight ahead and gray, and seem as lifeless as his family's.

Sam looks back at the cabinets. "_HE'S THE ONE. KILL HIM, ._"

Underneath that message there's another.

"_DEAN SAYS HELLO_."

Sam clenches his fist until his fingernails have cut into his skin.

"Sam I don't—I don't understand. What's going on?"

Sam doesn't answer. He doesn't know how to. He doesn't understand, either. He doesn't understand what these demons still want with him, want with any of the "special" kids, and—wait. Special kids. "He's the one?" The one what?

Sam looks up and meets Calvin's eyes. The kid's eyes flash black, so quickly Sam thinks he's seeing things. He knows Calvin's not a demon. He would be able to tell.

He's something else.

"Calvin, come outside with me."

Calvin's unsteady on his feet, but he manages to make it out onto the porch and collapses on the wooden steps.

"I need you to be entirely truthful with me, Calvin," he says.

"What?" Calvin's bleary-eyed and shell-shocked, and Sam makes a note to get him out of here as soon as possible. But first he has to know.

"Did your mother die in a fire?"

Calvin looks at him sharply. Murder flashes in his eyes. "My mother's inside, you asshole!" Calvin leaps to his feet and flings himself at Sam, swinging madly. Sam blocks the first wild punch, calmly, and grabs the arm. The second fist flies at his face and Sam catches that one, too.

"I'm sorry," he says. "I have to be sure."

Calvin's breathing hard, like he can't pull oxygen into his lungs and Sam thinks maybe he's having a panic attack or suffocating, but the kid calms down, his breaths even out.

"Listen to me carefully, Calvin," says Sam. He doesn't worry about innocence and ignorance anymore. Calvin no longer has those luxuries.

Calvin nods but doesn't look him in the eyes.

"You asked me yesterday, if I believe in ghosts? I do."

Calvin is focused on the ground at his feet, his arms still caught in Sam's hands. He doesn't struggle.

"I'm not a traveling salesman," Sam tells him. "I'm a hunter. I kill ghosts, and werewolves, and demons and any kind of horror movie type of freak you can think of."

Calvin looks up at him then, his eyes narrow. He doesn't move beyond that, or speak.

"Your family was killed by demons."

Calvin speaks then, low and like a growl. "Shut up."

Sam continues, "There's a whole world of supernatural beings out there, and some of them, for reasons I've never really understood, murder people."

"Shut up."

"I'm sorry, Calvin."

"They're not dead! They can't be dead! _Shut UP!_"

Calvin's struggling again, and Sam understands the lost, broken rage that he sees in the kid. He knocks him over the head with his elbow and catches him when he drops. He drags Calvin to the Impala and lays him in the back seat, then goes back into the cottage.

There's a pot of spaghetti on the cold stove. A bowl of salad browns on the counter, splattered with a red so much deeper than raspberry vinaigrette. He stares at the message. Commits the whole room to memory. He bites his lip till it bleeds.

"What the FUCK do you WANT from me!" He yells into nothing.

When he gets back to the Impala Calvin's awake, but unmoving. He climbs into the drivers seat. He rests his hands on the steering wheel. The leather is smooth beneath his fingers. He doesn't start the car.

"I had dreams about Hell," says Calvin.

Sam turns around and rests his elbow over the seat.

"It was five years ago," Calvin continues. "I was just finishing my freshman year in high school. I remember a town, and a bell, and a man with yellow eyes. The next night I had another dream. It was in a graveyard, and there was a doorway to Hell and I stood right in front of it as it opened and black…evil poured out."

Calvin sat up.

"It's in that book. The graveyard."

Sam nods.

"You're a hunter."

"Yeah," says Sam.

"I want to kill the demons that did this. You're going to show me how."


	3. Part 3

A/N: Er, so it kinda evolved again into four parts. Damn. Well, I am so bad at this fanfic stuff. I don't think I really have anyone's voices quite right, especially Sam, since apparently (as shown in Mystery Spot) goes OCD instead of angsty when Dean's gone.

Anyway, I hope you guys don't hate my OC too much. I get annoyed with them, myself, but this one wouldn't leave me alone (Calvin, I mean). He's based after my brother, because just a few weeks ago my bro really DID hitchhike across the country, which got me thinking "what if SamnDean ever picked up a hitchhiker?" As well as all the metaphysical stuff the show makes me think about, like the dynamics of Hell and souls and demons and stuff. So, yeah, fun times. The last part will be, ideally, be up tomorrow, if anyone's still reading this besides the amazing NefariousVestal (And NV, thank you very much for the kind words :) I hope the rest of the fic doesn't disappoint...)

Onward...

**Let Me Die In My Footsteps**

**Part Three**

_Go out in your country where the land meets the sun  
See the craters and the canyons where the waterfalls run  
Nevada, New Mexico, Arizona, Idaho  
Let every state in this union seep in your souls.  
And you'll die in your footsteps  
Before you go down under the ground._

_Bob Dylan "Let Me Die In My Footsteps"_

Sam pulls up to Bobby's house late in the afternoon. Calvin's passed out in the backseat. He hasn't said a word since they left the cottage. He didn't want to stick around for the police, though Sam did call in an anonymous tip as they drove away.

Bobby's place hasn't changed. The same dog stands watching him, growling, as he gets out of the car. He leaves Calvin asleep. He stands next to his open door.

The front door opens and Bobby steps outside. He's holding a shotgun, but he isn't pointing it at Sam, just holding it.

They stare at each other. A bird caws in a tree behind the house.

Bobby sighs and adjusts the hat he's wearing.

"Well, git your ass inside, yeh idjit," says Bobby, and goes back into his house. Sam smiles a small smile and follows him.

Bobby heads right to the kitchen, where he gets two beers out from the fridge. He hands one to Sam, and downs half of his own before Sam can even twist off the cap. Bobby doesn't look older, but he does have some wear around his eyes. They look…tired.

Sam sits down at the table.

"I need your help, Bobby."

Bobby stares at him hard.

"'Course you do."

If Bobby just came out and slugged him Sam thinks it would be less awkward.

"There's been some, uh, it's been…."

"I hear you've been picking up hitchers," says Bobby. "You've got the retard gene after all, Sammy. Congratulations."

"How did you…?"

Bobby takes a swig and leans on his counter.

"Couple old acquaintances o' mine called me. Gaines, Rufus, the crazy travellin' holy man. What the Hell've you been thinkin'?"

Sam bows his head. "It was the silence," he says.

"Well shit, boy," says Bobby, raising his voice and stepping forward. "Try answering the phone, then. Or, hey, takin' me along like you said ya would."

"I did," says Sam.

"No, you used me while we killed Lilith, Sam. Then you left, with no word. No word for almost three years."

"I needed some time to…," Sam trails off. "It's not like _that's_ never happened before though, right? Me just…leaving."

"This is different and you know it."

"I know." He leans his arms on his legs and bends forward. "I brought someone with me, Bobby."

"You what?" Bobby looks out the window at the car. Sam assumes Calvin's still sleeping in the back, because Bobby says, "You got 'em in the trunk?"

"He's asleep."

"And why in Satan's toe jam did ya bring him here?"

Bobby's finished his beer and is getting another.

"His family was killed today," says Sam. "By demons."

Bobby sits at the table across from Sam. "Really? Demons? I haven't even heard of a possession since the one you took care of, what, a year ago? Are you sure?"

Sam nods. "They left me a message. And that demon in Colorado? It was Meg."

"That was Meg? What, the bitch has a get-out-of-Hell-free card?

"Probably. But she was after someone, Bobby. And I found out who."

"He the one you got stashed it the car?"

Sam takes his first gulp of the beer, and wishes it were something stronger.

"Well, shit," says Bobby. "They still after him?"

"They left a message. They want me to kill him," says Sam. "He's…like me. He's '_special_.'" Sam says the last word like it's the scorpion he's trying to spit out of his mouth.

Sam runs a hand through his hair. "He's…he wants to go after the demons that did it."

"Well, no shit."

"I want to leave him here with you. Just until I can kill the demons that're after him."

Bobby laughs. "You want to leave some kid with demonic gifts with me while you go off searching for the demons that killed his family, alone?"

"Yes?"

"You are much stupider than I ever gave you credit for."

"Thanks."

"No."

"What?"

"You heard me, Sam," says Bobby. "No. I ain't babysittin' some kid while you go off fightin' demons, no matter how good ye'are at it. I'm going with you."

"But what about Calvin? I can't just…."

Bobby finishes off his second beer and says, "Well then I guess he's comin' too, or you can just set him loose and let him go back where he came from."

"I can't just ditch him, not now."

"Since you found out he has about a three in five chance of turning homicidal-psycho and killing everyone he knows?"

Sam shrugs. "Fool me twice," he says.

"Yeah, shame on you. You know what this kid can do?"

"No, only that he lives in the town where Meg was searching for a 'special child,' he had dreams about the yellow eyed demon, and demons left me a message in blood at his family's cottage telling me so."

Bobby nods.

"So you don't know…." He trails off when they hear a squeaking car door open outside.

"Sounds like he's awake," says Sam. He stands to meet Calvin outside, but the kid's already coming up to the door.

"Hello?" calls Calvin. "Um, Sam?"

"You can come inside, Calvin," answers Sam. Bobby glowers at him. Sam shrugs.

Still outside Calvin says, "Yeah, about that, I can't."

Bobby stands up, reaches for the shotgun he still has in reach. He whispers, "can't get by the protective seals?"

Calvin says, "There's this, like, yeti-size dog out here and I don't think he likes me much."

Bobby's tensed shoulders drop a bit, but he doesn't set down the gun as he heads for the front door. Sam follows.

"Samson, cut it out," Bobby tells the dog as he goes outside.

Calvin's standing halfway between the car and the house. His face is blank, like he only barely registers that the dog, or Bobby, for that matter, is even there. His hair is stringy and wild, and his clothes are rumpled. Dark circles rest under his eyes. Sam recognizes the look. He's seen it on too many people to count. Mostly he sees it on himself.

Calvin looks at Bobby when Samson stops growling. He glances down at the shotgun in Bobby's hands and takes a small step backwards.

"_Bobby_," hisses Sam. To Calvin he says, "Calvin, this is Bobby. Bobby, Calvin."

"Hi," Calvin says. Bobby nods to him.

Bobby turns and walks back inside, saying, "Well, come on inside, then. Samson, stay."

Calvin stands where he is until Sam says, "It's okay. You can come in. Bobby's an old friend of my family's."

Calvin follows him inside and they all sit around the table in the kitchen. Bobby puts a beer in front of Calvin.

"No thanks," murmurs the kid.

"Drink it," says Bobby. Calvin looks up at him and frowns.

"No thanks," he says again.

"You'll drink it, kid," insists Bobby.

"Why?"

Sam rolls his eyes. "You can just take one drink, Calvin."

Calvin looks at Sam now, suspicious. "Why?"

"It's a precaution," says Bobby.

"A precaution for what? What the Hell, man? You got, like, arsenic in there or something?"

"No, just Holy water," says Bobby.

"Holy water," deadpans Calvin. He closes his eyes and breathes deeply out his nose, but then he grabs the beer and takes a large gulp of it. His face pinches, like he's drinking straight ethanol.

"That's terrible," he says, setting the bottle back on the table. He meets Bobby's eyes and backpedals. "I mean, uh, thanks for, er, yeah."

Bobby crosses his arms over his chest and leans back.

Calvin says, "So that, what, proves I'm not unholy? Do you need me to eat some garlic, too?

"Don't be an idjit, boy," says Bobby, "vampires don't care 'bout garlic 'cept for that godawful smell."

"Vampires," Calvin mutters. "Good to know."

Sam used to be good with platitudes. Or at least adequate, he thinks, but it's so much easier when he wasn't actually involved with the victims. He'd spoken to Calvin's mom. He knew what her voice had sounded like. She wasn't as faceless as he would have liked.

He thinks he should say, well, something. Anything.

He says, "I know how you feel," because he does, but when Calvin turns to him he wishes he'd stuck to silence.

Calvin says, "That's supposed to, what, make me feel better?"

"Well…."

"Your whole family is dead, too?"

Sam glances at Bobby. "Most of them, yeah."

"How?"

"Well…it's a long—"

Calvin interrupts, "Was it demons, too?"

"Yeah, it was demons."

"And is this how you got into this whole, what, hunting thing? Your family died?"

"My mom. My dad raised me and my brother to kill supernatural things, and they…."

"They got killed somewhere along the way."

"Basically."

"This sucks," says Calvin. Bobby and Sam can't help but agree.

They sit a moment in silence, a moment for the dead and the sacrificed, but mostly it's a moment of silence for the living because the dead, well, they're dead, Sam thinks. They're dead and they left us here to flounder in the wake of their absence.

Bobby's the first to break it when he says, "We haven't seen many demons in a long while. We been thinkin' they were dying out, staying in Hell where they belong. But it looks like they've just been waiting."

Sam adds, "Those dreams you had? I used to have dreams like them too. I would…see things, before they happen. Because when I was six months old a demon—the yellow-eyed man you saw—poisoned me with his blood. It's…."

"There was a war," says Bobby.

"I think I saw it," says Calvin. "It was like, three years ago? Two? I thought I was going insane."

"What did you see?"

Calvin slumps into his chair and watches his hands as he talks. "There was always this creepy-ass girl, with white eyes, and this guy plastered to a ceiling with glue or something because he's just hanging there with his stomach cut open and…." He stops and turns to Sam. "It was you. I remember, now. I don't really know what happened. You were bleeding and there was this…screaming, and black, black eyes. And then it…it was like the world ended, and for two weeks all my dreams were darkness, like it was just me floating in space and nothing else."

Bobby laughs like a man in the gallows, and says, "that was Sam, all right."

"I thought I was just crazy. Or, like, had some wicked bad food poisoning."

Calvin wraps his arms around himself, and looks momentarily like he's sixteen instead of twenty.

"So I'm like you, then. All demony."

"Welcome to the club," says Sam. "Therapy's every other day and twice on Thursdays."

Calvin barks a laugh that sounds like death, a bit, and Sam cringes.

"How do you kill demons? I mean, if they can just be let out of Hell like those dreams I had…."

Bobby sits forward. "Dreams? You been dreamin' about Hell breakin' loose?"

"He did," says Sam, "back when it actually happened."

"Oh," says Bobby. He frowns. "Oops."

"That was you, too?" Calvin asks, "You opened the gates of Hell?"

"It was an accident?"

Calvin says, "How do you do something like that accidentally?"

"Demons," says Sam.

Bobby says, "you know, this is great an' all, a real fun chat. But we got a problem if the demons out there are just lying in wait, and not gone like with thought."

"They're planning something," says Sam.

"How does no one notice that? A bunch of demons planning, I mean. I would think people would notice demons," says Calvin.

Sam shakes his head. "No, they look just like you or me, because they _can_ be you or me. Well, not so much me anymore, but you. They possess people. It's more like _The Exorcist_ than _Buffy the Vampire Slayer_."

"Why not you?"

Sam pulls his shirt down and shows Calvin the tattoo on his chest.

"It's a ward from possessions. I got it a few years ago after a few, er, problems."

"Can I get one?"

"It would be advisable," says Bobby, "if you're gonna follow through on your plan to start huntin'."

"Right," says Calvin. "So how do we start, this whole demon killing thing?"

It takes two days to get find any sign of a demonic possession, and even then they're pushing it. A missing persons report they find from some nowhere town in Wyoming, and the only reason they look into it at all is because it's near the enormous Devil's Trap that surrounds the cemetery and the gate to Hell.

Those two days give Sam a lot of time to wonder a lot of things, which is not something he really likes to do, with all the anti-fun memories filed inside his head, but he can't help it.

The first thing he wonders about is Calvin, and then it's mostly _why doesn't he have any powers beyond the dreams, like me?_ Followed by _I wonder how he's taking it_, because Calvin's barely speaking, barely doing anything besides reading and what looks like meditation. He finished the book Rufus gave Sam the night they got to Bobby's, and follows that with books from Bobby's library. Sam sticks to his computer, trying to find any sign of a demon anywhere, because he really doesn't want to summon one and he has Bobby's library practically memorized.

At night he sits on the ground with his legs crossed and his eyes closed.

Bobby just watches on. He's wary of Calvin, Sam notices, but it's more because he's Bobby and less because he thinks Calvin's a threat than anything else. Samson, actually, takes to Calvin and sleeps by the couch where Calvin took up residence.

It's the second night at Bobby's when Sam notices Calvin acting weird. He's about to hit the hay and happens to look out his window to see Calvin standing, back to the house, facing into the dark.

As Sam watches Calvin until the kid goes back inside, and Sam wonders what he was looking for out there.

In the morning they leave and even after three years Sam doesn't think it's weird that he's traveling with Bobby, again, but it is weird that he's driving, Bobby's riding shotgun and there's a third person in the car, because it was always him in the backseat or just him and Bobby, before.

They reach Gillette before noon, and Casper not long after. The man went missing from there, from a Wal-Mart in the middle of the day. His car and a shopping cart filled with all his stuff was left in the parking lot. He never made it home. There was no sign of a struggle, and it soon becomes apparent that there is absolutely no trail to follow from there, because the guy's just gone.

Calvin kicks the guy's car after Sam comes back from interviewing his family with no success, and Bobby's finagled no info from the police. As he's fuming Sam thinks he sees the kid's eyes flash black, again, and this time he knows he's not just seeing things. But still, he knows the kid's not possessed. He would know.

He doesn't quite get why Calvin would have demonic symptoms, but he's only worried about what Bobby would do if he noticed, so he doesn't say anything.

After all, Sam hasn't really had to worry that anything demonic could hurt him for years.

He wonders what it is that makes Calvin's eyes go black. He doesn't think it's ever happened to him.

It's unsettling, as much as anything is in the world, but Sam's not overly concerned yet.

Calvin's shaking. Bobby, being Bobby, grasps the kid's shoulder and says, "we'll get them, don't worry."

Sam, being Sam, says, "These things don't usually get solved right away."

Bobby says, "Let's get a room for the night and figure out where to go from there."

They get a room in a Motel 6 down I-25 from Casper. It has two beds and for the second time Sam finds himself in the bed closest the door, with Bobby on the other and Calvin on a cot. He still has Rufus' book, and Sam tells him he can just keep it because Sam doesn't need it.

They order in Chinese.

Bobby and Sam down their food in minutes, but Calvin just picks at his. His carton is still mostly full when Sam and Bobby go to sleep. He sits on his cot in the dark, staring into space.

Sam doesn't think the kid gets any sleep because he's still sitting there when Sam wakes up in the morning. Bobby rolls his eyes when Sam shoots him a plaintive look, and says, quietly, "this is normal grief, Sam."

Sam knows he's right, knows he's never really had an experience like this with normal grief. There's always been an end of a fantasy in fire, and deals with demons, and years picking up hitchhikers for Sam, not these normal stages, and Sam's not jealous. Not even a little, because, he realizes, Calvin's really got no one.

No one but some stranger that picked him up four days ago.

Sam wonders if he'd deal the same way.

Calvin, still staring into space, says, "I want to go to the Gate."

"What's that?" Says Sam.

"What in God's name would you want to go there for?" Asks Bobby.

"I want to see it in person," says Calvin.

Sam says, "No, we're not going that way. I thought you wanted to get the demons that killed your family?"

"I will get them. But I want to see the Gate to Hell, and I don't exactly have anything else going on, right now."

Bobby says, "You don't want to go there, kid. Nothing but ghosts and graves."

"I can get there on my own, then," Calvin says. "I know where it is."

Sam asks, "You do? How?"

"It's in that book you gave me, _Gateways to Hell_. Samuel Colt's book."

Bobby shakes his head and mutters something about youth and mental handicaps, paces the room, and Sam knows that they'll be going. They leave around noon. They aren't in any hurry. It only takes a couple hours, but dark storm clouds have moved it, and the absence of direct sunlight gives the world an eerie glow.

The cowboy cemetery is the same as Sam remembers. It's creepy, and dank, and old. The crypt that is the Gate is the same.

Jake's body isn't there anymore, or the man that the yellow-eyed demon possessed. Sam, Dean, Bobby and Ellen had burned their bodies after the fight. That's the only thing different, that and Ellen's not there, and Dean's in Hell, and while he feels sorry for the kid Calvin doesn't quite fit.

Sam knows, vaguely, that no one ever quite fits right away, but he also knows that he doesn't _want_ Calvin to fit. He wants Calvin to go back to school and to his life once they find the demons. He doesn't want to grow used to his presence, or start to enjoy it, or to feel a connection.

He doesn't want to, but he thinks that once the demons are dead there's no way Calvin will go back to normal. No one ever does. He knows that there's a hole in the world where Dean used to fit, and for Calvin, the whole is the size of an entire family, and it's freshly dug.

Calvin walks up to the door. He places one hand on it.

"It's bigger than it looked in my dreams," he says.

Sam stands next to him. Bobby hangs back. He keeps looking around like he's expecting demons to crawl out of the ground or drop from the sky.

"I think I can help your brother, Sam," says Calvin.

Sam stops. His heart, his brain, everything stops.

"How do you know about Dean." Sam doesn't speak in a question. It's a demand. Because along with everything else, his sympathy stops, too. He thinks maybe he had Calvin pegged wrong. Calvin is an enemy.

Bobby approaches too, sensing the tension.

"I'm sorry, Sam," says Calvin. "I didn't mean to."

"Mean to _what_, boy?" asks Bobby.

"I sort of…remembered it, I think," says Calvin.

"Remembered it," says Sam, his voice cold, frozen like the rest of him.

Bobby's hand reaches back to his gun, but a sharp motion from Sam stops him.

"Remembered _what_," asks Sam.

"It was the dreams. You know, the ones that I thought were just me being insane? The first one was the town, with the bell. But the second one, the second one was…it was a guy, a tall guy with a jacket and that necklace"—Calvin points at Dean's amulet, around Sam's neck—"and he made…a deal, with someone? Another _demon_ right?"

Sam nods.

"And four years ago, with all those freakin' bladder-releasing dreams with the white-eyed one, well, I saw him die. I saw you die, too, but he's _really _dead. He's in Hell."

"Get to the point, kid," growls Bobby. "We know all that already."

Calvin looks back to the Gate. "Yeah, well, I think I know how to fix it."

"Fix it. Just like that."

"Yeah, I've been thinking about it ever since…. For the last couple nights, anyway."

"You can't just fix this," says Bobby. "That's what Dean tried to do. And, apparently, we all know how that brilliant idea turned out."

"This is different," he says.

"Different how?" Bobby's voice is rising. He waves his arms in a jagged manner, emphasizing his words. "We're at the _Gate_ to _Hell_ and there ain't a single plan I can think of involving being here that can ever amount to anything resembling good!"

"We can get him out of there! He doesn't have to spend eternity in Hell," insists Calvin. "The door goes both ways."

"So what?"

"So I can get in there, and get Dean out. That's what," says Calvin.

Bobby snorts, like it's the dumbest thing he's ever heard, and it just might be.

"You want to go to Hell," says Sam.

"Well, it wouldn't be all of me. Just my soul," says Calvin.

"How?"

"Forget about how," says Bobby, "We can't even open the door without the colt. We don't have that, if you'll recall."

A new voice, an unwelcome voice says, "I do."

All three of them turn, and standing in front of them is Ellen, only not, because her eyes are the pitch black of Hell. She smirking and twirling the colt in her hand. There are two others, and one of them is the man who went missing from Casper, eyes also black.

Sam opens his mouth to send them on their way, but she raises the colt, pulls back the hammer, and points it at his chest.

"I wouldn't do that if I were you, Sammy," says the demon in Ellen.

She takes a step forward, black eyes zeroed in on Sam. She jerks the arm that isn't holding the colt, and all their weapons are pulled from their hands and flung into the cemetery. Sam glares at her. "Meg," he says.

Bobby growls, "How in Jesus Christ's body odor do you get out of Hell so damn easily?"

"It's a gift," she says. "And I've told you, Sammy, my name's _not_ Meg."

Sam shrugs, cocky, and smirks at her. "What do you want now, _Meg_?"

"Oh, just a little Hell on earth, you know, the usual," she says, and the murky evil, lithe and fluid, that Meg embodies does not fit with Ellen. She seems like an odd caricature, a mask that doesn't quite fit.

Sam's really starting to wonder why they never fixed the iron Devil's Trap made by the railroad tracks around the cemetery, but he had much more on his mind back then. He doesn't think it ever even occurred to him.

"Well," amends Meg, "That's not _all_ I want. I also want your little friend, there," she nods at Calvin, "and getting to kill you is a definite desire of mine."

Sam, stalling, trying to think of anything to do, because Meg's finger is tight on the trigger and if he starts using any mind-bending power on her she'll shoot, and dying is not exactly high on his to-do list.

He says, "Why do you want Calvin?"

"Oh, not for any _special_ reason," says Meg, "It's just that I'm actually a very sentimental person, and he _is_ one of Father's _children_, after all. He's like, my brother."

"Wouldn't that make us siblings too?" Sam can't help the shudder that ripples through him at that thought.

"Then I guess this makes me Cain," she says, and begins squeezes the trigger.

Sam flinches, throws out his hand to stop the bullet, but the gun never fires. A black fog, a demon cloud flies past him towards Meg in Ellen's body. Calvin's body, next to Sam, falls to the ground in a heap. Sam uses the distraction to fling himself at one of the demons flanking Meg, and sends it to Hell with three simple words. Bobby's got the other in a headlock and is reciting an exorcism as he dumps a flask of Holy water on it.

The black cloud startles Meg but she doesn't look surprised to see it. She shoots it with the colt, but the bullet passes harmlessly through it. Or, at least, Sam thinks it's harmless until he sees a scrape appear on Calvin's arm that looks like a bullet's graze.

Ideas start falling into place in Sam's head.

The black cloud, Calvin, flies at Meg and disappears into Ellen through her mouth. Sam watches the battle for her body, like a thousand little lightning storms happening all at once, in one person, and then she throws her head back and a blackness, like a snake and a mushroom cloud all in one, explodes out of her, and disappears into the sky. She collapses.

A small trickle of black leaks out of her relaxed mouth, and slithers along the ground, like it's blind and searching, and it makes its way towards Calvin's body. It enters through his ear.

Sam grabs the colt from where it lays in Ellen's limp hand, and he points it at Calvin. Bobby kneels and checks Ellen's pulse.

"What about those two," asks Sam, nodding his head at the two men, and Bobby shakes his head.

"Dead," he says.

"And Ellen?"

"Pulse is strong," says Bobby. He rises and stands next to Sam. "What just happened?"

"I'm not entirely sure, Bobby," says Sam. The colt is steady in his hand. Calvin stirs.

"Ugh," says the kid. "That is so disgusting." He drags himself to his knees and shakes. He rubs at his arms and legs as though there are spiders crawling all over him.

Sam doesn't move or speak or breathe. Bobby stays silent behind him, watching.

"You knew they would be here," says Sam.

Calvin looks up at him. Guilt is in his eyes, and perhaps a little shame. He bite his lip. Sam has the colt pointed at the kid's head. He waits for Calvin's eye to turn black, but they don't. They're as clear and blue as when Sam first picked him up outside Denver.

"Yeah," says Calvin. "I did."

"You had, what, a vision?" asks Sam.

"Just a dream. She was in it. Telling me to come here."

Bobby asks, "What did you do?"

"I got the idea from the book," says Calvin. "And, well, I lived all around Boulder for two years."

"What does that have to do with anything?"

"That's my power, or whatever," says Calvin. "It says in the book, all a demon is is the soul, corrupted in Hell and leaked into the world, somehow."

"And that has to do with you _becoming a demon_ how?"

Calvin's eyes flicker from the colt to Sam to Bobby, and he's got a sheen of sweat on his face.

"Well, that's where Boulder comes in. They're mondo into the whole new agey, meditation thing, and I had this girlfriend once who did it like, every morning, and she taught me how to, too, so I just…disconnected. From my self."

"You mean you, your soul, can leave you body?" Sam narrows his eyes, and says, "why is your soul black? Why have your eyes been turning black, like a demons? You—"

"That's it, though isn't it? We—you and I—we're part demon. It's like the X-men, only it wasn't just our genes that got mutated, right? I mean, you could do this too, I bet."

Sam shakes his head. "No, I can't." He pulls back the hammer on the colt.

"Whoa whoa wait a minute, Sam," pleads Calvin. He brings his hands up, surrender and placation. "What are you doing? You're gonna shoot me?"

"Sam, what're you doing?" Bobby asks, stepping closer to him.

"He's just like Ava, Bobby. And Anson."

"Who?" asks Bobby. Calvin's pale, eyes wide.

"Andy's brother," says Sam. "And like Jake. Bobby, his soul is black! Literally! How can he be good?"

"Sam I'm all for killing evil, but he ain't done anything wrong," says Bobby.

_If it's supernatural, we kill it._

"He just _is_ wrong, Bobby," says Sam. _Like me_. "We're…everything's all _wrong_."

Sam thinks of Ava, of Andy's brother, of Gordon, of Jake. He thinks of Andy, of the baby Rosie, of Lenore and of himself. And if he kills himself he's spitting on Dean's gift, on Dean's _life_, and if Dean thought he was worth it, believed that Sam could fight that darkness even without Dean there, then maybe Sam should believe in Calvin.

Calvin's looking him in the eyes, up the barrel of the colt. He looks resigned, like he knows this was coming. Maybe he did. Maybe he's seen months of Sam killing the supernatural, in dreams and meditation or whatever, maybe in the days since his family died he's had the same thoughts Sam has, everyday.

_If it's supernatural we kill it._

_Kill it._

He's not an it. There is no it. There's people and choices, thinks Sam.

"I'm not wrong, I'm just me," Calvin says, "I can't help who I am."

Sam lowers the colt. He's not shaking, and he doesn't think he ever would have pulled the trigger. This isn't the same as Madison. Calvin's not losing himself. He's not losing control. No more than Sam is.

Calvin says, "I just…everyone's gone, Sam, and there's just _me_."

There's a hole in the world where Dean used to be.

Sam drops his arm to his side, and lets the hammer on he gun up.

Calvin gets to his feet.

"So do you want to hear my plan to help your brother now?"

Sam laughs, mostly because he doesn't know what else to do. "Yeah," he says, and this time Bobby doesn't disagree.

"Well," says Calvin, "there's this gate, and we can open it, right? Now that we have that, er, gun. Thing. So we can get into Hell."

"We?" asks Bobby.

"Not 'we' so much as Sam, or me, because you can't just enter Hell. There's no physical, you have to be a soul. So we can do it."

"That's wonderful," says Bobby, sarcasm evident. "A one way ticket to Hell, without the complication of selling your soul to get there."

"It's not one way!" says Calvin. "There's a way out! It's all in Colt's book. There's a cemetery in Lawrence, Kansas where the barrier between this life and the afterlife is cracked. It's like a vase with a split in it, it still holds water but some of it leaks through."

"Lawrence," says Sam. Because of course it's in fuckin' Lawrence.

"Yep," affirms Calvin. "All I have to do is teach you how to disconnect yourself, and you can go into Hell and find Dean, and it shouldn't be a problem because you'll be there voluntarily. You'll, theoretically, be able to move around in there. It's all very abstract and philosophical, which is really more of my sister's strong point, but I think…." He trails off and looks at the ground.

Calvin sighs and says, "I haven't really been…thinking about it, you know?"

There's a beat. Not even the wind makes a noise.

"Anyway, all we have to do is open the door a crack, let you through, and then get your body to Lawrence for you when you come out. Assuming you can navigate through Hell, find your brother, free his soul, and drag him out with you.

"And that's the whole plan."

Another momentary silence occurs.

Bobby turns to Sam. "You Winchesters are stupidity magnets."

"It is one of the lamest, and most idiotic plans I've ever heard," says Sam. "Let's do it."


	4. Part 4

A/N: And this is the end. It gets weird, now. Sorry.

For your reference: Charon and Hades are Greek afterlife mythos. Anubis and Duat are Egyptian. Hell is, of course, Christian. The harpies are from Dante's Divine Comedy, the ring with suicides, loosely interpreted. I just kind of felt like mixing them all together. Kripke and friends does so on the show, mixing pagan and American Indian and Christianity. I figured if their living world were a mix, the afterlife would probably be a bastard child of mythology, too.

I also wanted a more…worldly Hell. A sort of RPG Hell that Sam can navigate in, while it still kind of molds to fit him.

Thanks to my reviewers. You're awesome, because I know I hardly ever review. I'm a bad person. You're better people.

**Let Me Die In My Footsteps**

**Part Four**

_Let me walk down the highway with my brother in peace…._

In the end the plan is stunningly easy to prepare for, because the near-OCD organization of Sam's mind makes him a natural at separating it from his body. He thinks of it as what Andy did at Cold Oak, sending the images to Dean, only what he sends out of his self is his soul.

And Sam's soul, turns out, is every bit as black as Calvin's.

There's a part of Sam, the part that knows Hell exists and believes in heaven, which shrivels and dies a bit at this. He doesn't think souls as black as theirs will be welcome.

When Ellen wakes up she is in shock. She thanks Calvin, while at the same time she wont get within ten feet of him, and she's been skirting around Sam, too. Another part of Sam shrivels at this but he can't blame her because he's just as freaked out about his crappy, cursed life as the rest of them.

Calvin is a mess, but that's to be expected, and Sam suspects that most of this plan is more of an effort to forget his life _before_.

They camp out at the cemetery. Bobby, who doesn't have much of anything to do with this plan, takes the car and Ellen and they fixed the break in the devil's trap, which takes all of a day and by then Sam can leave his body and get back to it.

The sensation of being separated from his body is weird. It's like having no boundaries, like he's spread out and contained all at once. He figures it's because, with no physical form, he can feel the breeze passing through him. It kind of feels like being dead, he thinks, if he thinks back hard on what he felt after Cold Oak when Dean brought him back, he knows he feels the same whenever he reenters his body.

He masters that new ability all too soon, because they still haven't quite figured out what he'll be doing once he gets into Hell, or even if it's a good idea to open the Gate to begin with. They've given Ellen and Calvin temporary tattoo like Sam's, to protect them against possession if any demons leak out. But that's the easy part.

"What do I do once I get in there?" Sam asks Calvin.

Calvin snorts. "How should I know? I'm the newbie in all this."

"You act like you know what's going on all the time, though," says Sam, pouting.

"Dude, I'm a pilot. We always look like we know what's going on," says Calvin. "Planes still crash."

Sam, then, hears Dean's voice, which he hasn't heard in more than a year.

_Planes crash, Sam!_

_Dude,__ stow the touchy-feely-self-help-yoga crap. It's not helping!_

Sam laughs out loud at that, because he's not heard Dean's voice in his head for years and because the irony of it he thinks Dean would enjoy much more than he does. That touchy-feely, new age crap is what's about to get Dean out of Hell.

"I think I can just figure it out as I go along," says Sam. "It can't be that hard if Meg's escaping Hell every other day."

It's a week after Sam meets Calvin when they open the Gate.

Sam's got the colt, and Bobby's right next to him with Calvin and Ellen, ready to shut the door once he's through. He gives the colt to Bobby and leaves his body. Bobby opens the door without preamble and lets loose a torrent, a flood from Hell that he has to fight through to get inside. Everything's pushing against him, trying to keep him out, trying to get out, but he gets through, like he's wading upstream.

Then the door shuts behind him and he's falling forward, solid, in his own body again. Or, at least, he feels like it's his body, only it's not quite solid around the edges and he can't feel his heart beating.

The world around him is dead.

It's really not what he was expecting—some sort of inferno, a maze of fire and blood and screams. There are screams, but the land is a wasteland. Where there was a graveyard in the land of the living, Hell is a soot-gray and orange desert, smoldering embers and slow burning fires of every color, smoke rising in tendrils all across the sky. There is no sun, no moon, but the vastness of sky glows red and left a monotone cast on the landscape.

Around him there are others, recovering and standing up, and from the blackness of their eyes he realizes that they are demons. They do not give him a second glance. He wonders if his eyes are black, too.

The demons do not move. They sit where they are, gazing into nothing, and from the ground come hands that wrap around their legs and pull them down, and they scream, as though they are seeing and feeling something that only they can feel and see.

Sam feels fingers around ankle, and jumps forward. Where he stood there are arms, blindly reaching after him, then pulling back underground when they realize he is out of reach.

He gives the Gate one last look, a lone monument of stone in the barrens of fire and ash, before he runs in the direction that would be east if this were the land of the living.

On the horizon he can see a copse of spindly, gray-dead trees and he heads towards them.

His muscles—assuming he has any—don't ache or get tired. He doesn't breathe, but there's an overwhelming smell of decay that latches onto his nose. The ground beneath his feet has a layer of ash, and there's a layer of skeletons and bones and decay. It crackles and snaps and gushes under his feet.

As he nears the trees they start to move. He stops. No, it's not the trees moving, he realizes, there's something in the trees. Scratch that, there's _many_ somethings in the trees. The things have the heads of people, warped like melting dolls, and long fangs that gleam red in the light. Their bodies are birds, with gray wings and stringy, decrepit feathers. Their talons grip into the trees with claws as long as Sam's arm. As he approaches they turn to him, eyes red and glowing.

"Who goes there?" screeches one of them, the largest. The branch it rests on droops beneath it. Its eyes are blindly staring at him, a mucus white. Around it the other harpies stretch their necks toward Sam.

Sam stands his ground, staring the harpy in the eye. "Sam Winchester," he says.

The harpy throws back its head, the skin around its skeletal mouth hung like grotesque drapery and it laughs. The sound is a mixture of hyena and nails on a chalkboard. Sam tries hard not to flinch. Screams in the surrounding waste get closer and fade, a symphony of terror that gives Sam chills.

Dean's been in this for four years.

Sam hopes he can make it long enough to save him.

The harpy cries, "Samuel Winchester, King of demons, you grace the Underworld with your presence at last. I know of many demons who await your company quite eagerly."

The sarcasm in the scratchy voice is evident. Sam glares at the blind harpy, though it cannot see him do so. The other harpies take up a cacophony of laughter, a hellish sitcom.

Sam says, "I'm looking for my brother. Where is he?"

The harpy sneers, "I am a mere guardian of the wasteland. I am not privy to such information."

"Who is?"

"And why should I tell you, hunter? You have no power here. You are just another worthless lost soul."

The harpy was right; Sam could feel it. He could not access whatever it was that gave him power. He had only himself, his fists and what his family had taught him.

"Because I'll beat your ass in if you don't," says Sam, "And don't think I'll go easy on you just because you're fugly."

The harpy bristles. "You threaten the herdsman of the suicides? I cleave men's bowels with my claws and feast on their drippy, screaming souls. You wouldn't dare."

"Oh," says Sam, "I dare."

The harpy launches itself at Sam, spreading its wings and stretching forward its talons. Sam ducks beneath the blind attack, and grabs the tail feathers of the beast as it passes. He yanks down on it and throws it to the ground, then stands on its wings, pinning it. The other harpies squeal, ferocious and frantic but also pained and stupid, and they don't leave the tree.

The harpy struggles madly and caws, "I will drink your brains and suck out your eyeballs, hunter!"

"Tell me where I can find my brother," Sam demands, and twists his foot into the wing.

"I will use your spine as my perch!"

Sam sighs. He kicks the harpy's head, not enough to knock it out but enough to hurt.

"Tell me," he says.

"I will tell you nothing! The beast will destroy you and Satan will make you his bitch!"

Sam kicks again, hard enough that he feels a give and hears a crack, and the harpy doesn't move again. The screams are getting closer, and the harpies go silent. Their red, liquid eyes watch Sam as he walks past the trees, going around them and heading farther east. A storm billows across the sky, and as he walks blood-red rain falls, staining his clothes and burning his eyes.

As he continues he sees creatures, nightmares brought to life, more horrible and nightmaric than any of his, well, nightmares. A pack of small fiends, little gremlins with three, long fingers that end in razor claws, no eyes and gaping, grinning shark-toothed mouths try to ambush him but they're slow, and Sam gets away when he injures one and its friends turn on it, instead.

There are zombies littering the flaming barrens. They are long destroyed souls, with no memory of who they were or that they are, they only stand where they are and groan and decay.

Onward and onward he goes, for what may have been days and may have been millennia or minutes. One foot, than the other, and the further he goes the more he knows he's going the right way.

It's not any sort of psychic ability that makes him so sure. He just knows his brother is _this way_, like it's a memory and not a hunch.

_He's my brother_.

Remnants of souls are everywhere, growing into the decaying landscape like eroding statues, encased in grime and torment. They scream as he passes and he never gets used to the sound. The rain stops and his clothing dries, but it clings to him and the ash sticks to it.

He comes upon a river. It is vast, Amazonian. He climbs down the bank. In the water are bodies, reaching up towards the surface, wide-eye and struggling against something he can't see. The water moves in a lazy current. He can only just see the other side.

The idea to construct a raft lasts only until he looks up and down the shoreline before realizing there is nothing to build with. The banks are steep and rocky and there is no wood.

He strips off his shirt and shoes and approaches the water, taking a tentative step into it. The souls trapped in the water turn towards his foot, and strain towards it, eyes wide and mouths gnashing. Their skin hangs off their skulls and their bones show through shredded muscles.

Sam steps backwards, away from the water.

"Okay, swimming's a no," he says to himself.

He walks south along the shore.

He can't tell time because the light never changes and each step forward feel like any of the ones before it. There are screams and screams and screams and even though they all sound the same he can't get used to them. They pierce through his skull like a meat cleaver.

He doesn't grow tired but there's a weariness that descends on him. It's a weight of eternity.

He comes around a slight bend in the river and there's an old man standing next to the river, with a clunky Plexiglas boat with an outboard. His hair is white and his beard is long and tangled. He's wearing a white robe that is somehow unstained.

"How goes it, traveler?" Asks the old man. He sounds amiable to Sam, though that definitely doesn't mean the guy isn't planning on dismembering his soul and feeding it to the river.

"Great," says Sam.

The old man points across the expanse of water. "You are trying to get across the river?"

Sam nods. "Yeah."

The old man beckons him closer. "You are not supposed to be here, are you, young man?"

Sensing no danger, but still wary, Sam takes a small step forward.

"I'm not dead, no," answers Sam.

"I can ferry you across the Acheron," says the old man. Sam narrows his eyes. The name sounds familiar.

"No way," he says, "you're Charon, aren't you?"

"I have been known by that name, in the past," says the old man. He is smiling.

"I'm afraid I don't have payment," says Sam. He recalls that the Greeks believed one had to pay Charon to ferry them across the river. Coins on both eyes and the mouth.

The ferryman waves his hand in dismissal. "Nonsense, nonsense. I have no use for coins. Hades…the afterlife has changed. It is not as it once was. There was a recent overhaul in upper management. A reprieve from the screams is payment enough," he says.

Sam thinks of the hitchhikers, and the steep price they sometimes pay.

"Thank you," he says. "I would appreciate the ride."

Charon keeps the boat slow enough that it doesn't leave a wake. When Sam asks why, Charon just tells him that the souls trapped in the river of lamentation have enough to deal with besides the roar of a motor. The river never gets deep enough that Sam can't see the up-turned faces of the damned staring up at him.

Charon steers the boat to a small floating dock on the other side of the Acheron. Sam hops onto it and secures the boat with a buoyed rope.

"You're on the right path," the old man tells Sam.

"How do you know what path I'm on?"

The old man smiles and Sam, again, thinks about payment, but he lets it go because anything the old man may have taken from him—a piece of his soul, a few memories—Dean's worth it. Sam would give up everything he has if it meant Dean's freedom.

The old man waves him off and returns to the water on the boat. Sam climbs the bank on the east side of the Acheron and continues on his way.

The other side of the Acheron brings to Sam's mind the phrase "cold as Hell." If the west side of the Acheron was gray and ash and fire, this side is ice and frozen death. Sam, walking ever onward, finds himself shivering and numbed. There is a layer of ice under his feet. He can see hands reaching up through the semi-transparent ice, and the frozen liquid slushes around his feet as he walks. It seems to grab his feet with every step and try to trap him. Along the way there are half buried statues of humans, a torso and head staring frozen at the sky here, arms reaching above the ice, grasping for salvation above.

Sam tries not to think that they won't ever find it.

He tries not to think that like Ruby and Lilith and Meg, they will lose themselves and become what Sam fights, they will become demons. He tries not to think that, maybe, Dean will too. That maybe he already is.

On the horizon of the ice sheet Sam sees a fortress. A black plume of smoke rises from it. Sam walks around it, to the south.

There's an evil in the fortress. Sam can sense that much. An evil like Lilith and Azazel. Sam knows Dean's not there.

But he's getting closer to Dean, he can tell, though he doesn't know how much farther he has to go or what he'll find when he gets there.

It happens as he's skirting another fortress. The screams were sharp and close and Sam's flinching, and then the ice is breaking with a shotgun-like _CRACK_ and he falls through.

He lands on his feet and rolls, letting the forward motion absorb the impact. There is a roar behind him and he leaps to his feet, spinning and taking up a defensive stance.

It's the windigo. A swipe from its clawed hand nearly takes off his head when Sam freezes, startled by the familiar beast. He crouches and leaps forward, tackling the windigo. Once they're down Sam plunges a fist into the windigo's face, and pushes himself forward and to his feet, already running.

He's in an ice cavern, a catacomb with ice cementing the bodies of the souls, whose eyes still move and follow him, their mouths frozen open in screams. It's big enough that he can run through it without having to duck, and an electric blue glow comes from above.

He can hear the windigo behind him. Its super-human speed doesn't aid it in the winding of the tunnels, where Sam's agility is more helpful. He pulls away a bit, takes a few forks at top speed that leave his snarling pursuer crashing into the ice and sending shards shattering to the floor.

_Chow time, you freaky bastard! Yeah, that's right, bring it on baby, I taste gooood!_

Sam stoops and grabs a chunk of the fallen ice, a sharp stalactite.

He carreens around a corner and skids to a quick stop. As the windigo flies past Sam clotheslines it, then leaps onto it and bashes in its head with the sharp chunk of ice, stabbing it into the beasts head. He knows he can't kill it this way, but Sam then takes the ice to the windigos legs, breaking them, so it can't follow.

He stands, thinking he should at least be panting, but he hasn't broken a sweat and still isn't breathing. The absense of his heartbeat in the now silent cavern gives him the sensation of being in a vaccuum.

He starts off into the caves. He follows the right side of the labyrinth, taking care not to brush against the souls of the damned that line the walls like a mural of flesh.

There aren't any screams. These are the resigned, the traitors and the corrupt. He finds Ava and Jake among them, here.

Ava is gone. There isn't anything left in her. She's plastered, frozen into the wall, and her eyes stare into nothing, flickering and following things only she can see.

Jake is next to her, only slightly more fresh, his eyes full of rage and they watch Sam as he passes. He doesn't linger. He doesn't see the point.

There's a part of him that knows they deserve it.

It's the same part that tells him he might deserve it, that maybe all of the yellow-eyed demon's special children are inherently wrong. Hell just might be his destiny.

But he never sees Andy, and he's not sure what that means.

So far Sam thinks Hell hasn't been as bad as he had been thinking.

He finds a tunnel that goes deeper into the ground and one that goes upwards. There is a breeze coming from the deeper one. Against logic he goes down.

He thinks it's been easy because he's not supposed to be here, like Charon said.

The tunnel gets narrower and shorter, and the light fades to a full-moon-like glow. He starts to hear sounds, moans and gasps of pain, muted screams that echo through the cavern. The closer he gets to the frightening sounds the slower he goes, scooting along the edge of the wall while trying not to brush against the souls.

Just up ahead is an opening to a chamber. It's burning, a dark orange light pours out of it. There is heat, but it feels like an afterthought and it doesn't melt the ice.

The chamber is full of demons. They are rioting, a mob like a murder of crows, swooping and dancing around something in the center of the chamber. It's a man, hands tied above his head and hanging from the ceiling. It's Gordon.

_What is this, the rogues gallery of Sam Winchester murder attemptees?_

He's sensing a trend. And the demons feel familiar. None of them look the way he would remember them, but he realizes they must be demons that he had exorcised.

There was a lot of them.

Sam thinks he probably should have gone with logic. He backs out of the tunnel leading to the cavern, and starts upwards again. He supposes he was drawn to the lower chamber not out of any gut feeling, but because of the connection between him and all the inhabitants.

He gets within sight of the fork that leads upwards when he hears someone behind him.

"I was wondering when you'd show up," she says.

Sam turns to face her. He doesn't recognize her, but again there's a sense of familiarity.

"What, don't recognize me? I'm insulted. You're breaking my heart, Sam."

"Ruby?"

She grins, looking more demonic than he's ever seen. Her eyes are black, but somehow just as friendly as ever—which isn't much, but about as friendly as he could ever hope for in Hell.

"In the flesh," she says. "Or not, but you get what I mean."

"So then Lilith…."

"Banished me back to Hell, yeah."

"Fun times," says Sam.

"She's a bitch, what can I say."

"Was."

"Was?" says Ruby, "so you finally killed her? You must've used the colt, or she'd be back here. Well done, Winchester. But uh, as fun as this little nostalgia fest is we should leave. Like, now."

The screams and yelling from behind them approach.

"Walk and talk, Sam, no dilly-dallying," says Ruby. She grabs his arm and pulls him along, doing a half-walk half-run up and out of the caves.

"So are you dead?" she asks, letting his arm go. They're at the surface, and Sam suddenly has no sense of direction but he has a sense of Dean so he starts and a jog towards it. Ruby follows.

"Nope."

Ruby stumbles. "You opened the Gate. You retard, you opened the frickin' Gate!"

"I'm getting my brother out of here," Sam tells her.

"And screw the world while you're at it? Your brother is not more important than everyone else, Sam!"

Sam grunts, leaps over a guy who's been cleaved in half and is crawling over the frozen ground.

"Not to me," says Sam.

"That's exactly the kind of mindset that got Dean trapped here to begin with!"

Sam ignores her.

"Do you know where he is?" asks Sam.

He glances over his shoulder at her as they run, and he sees there're figures following them in the distance.

"You don't know where he is?" Ruby yells, "What was the plan, to just wander around _Hell_ hoping you would stumble upon him? You are retarded, aren't you."

"I have been getting that so much lately," Sam mutters. "So can you tell me where he is?"

The demons behind them are gaining. Their black eyes pierce into his. For every step he takes they seem to gain three.

The odd part of it is he feels on apprehension or fear, not from them, but that they can stop him from finding Dean. Nothing they can do to him can compare to the years Dean's been gone.

He runs faster. Ruby yells, "He's in Lawrence!" Then she stops, and turns to face the mob. Sam doesn't look back, just keeps running. His mind is running too. Lawrence? It always comes back to Lawrence. Where he was born, where everything started. And apparently where it ends.

The ice recedes. The landscape becomes scarce. There aren't souls, there aren't screams, it's a silent realm enshrouded with mist and fog. Dean's close.

Sam slows to a walk. There's no one following him anymore. Or, at least, none that he can really see because a voice calls out to him:

"STOP."

And Sam stops. The voice doesn't leave room for debate.

In front of him stands a man with the head of a dog. He's wearing an ornate cloth around his waist, chest bare.

"Sam Winchester," says the creature. "I cannot allow you to continue any further."

"I can't allow you to stop me."

The man's eyes pierce into him. They look like a wild dog, like a coyote or a jackal. His ears are incongruously large and pointed forward, focusing on Sam.

"There is nothing you can do," says the man, "and your presence here, as an undead soul, with a living body on the earth, only disrupts the balance of the universe."

"What balance of the universe? Nothing in the universe is balanced—everything's shit," says Sam.

The dog-headed man is silent. Then he holds out his hand, and draws forth from nothing a wicked looking knife, curved and sinister.

"I am guide to the souls of the dead," says the dog-man, "And you are not the dead. If you do not adhere to my directions, and leave immediately, I will be forced to take violent measures against you."

Sam grits his teeth and takes up a defensive stance. "I know you're Anubis," he says. "But how can you call yourself a guide to the dead if this is Hell, and the only place you guide them is to torture and evil? Everything I've read about you calls you neutral. This is evil."

Anubis holds the knife ahead of him, prepared to fight. "It is balance."

"No," says Sam, "Demons are everywhere and there's no sign of God. It's just people trying to survive, alone in the universe. Dean was balance."

Anubis doesn't reply. If Sam had not long ago given up any inkling of ever knowing what normal felt like this situation would be more weird than it is, but when the jackal-headed man takes a running leap at him in the bowels of the underworld, blocking the knife with a quick jab of his arm, and the uppercut he thrusts into the jaw of the deity feels like the most natural thing in the world.

Anubis responds to the punch with a kick aimed at Sam's leg, which Sam dodges backwards to avoid. It puts him off balance and the knife nearly catches him in the throat with Anubis swipes it at him, but Sam ducks and lunges forward.

He wraps a leg around one of Anubis', then pulls it out from under him, and at the same time crouches and jumps up, head-butting the dog face in the nose. A flash of pain opens up his back. Anubis got a stab in as he fell, but it's fleshy ad more of a graze than anything else.

Anubis lands on his ass and while he struggles to regain his feet Sam takes off into the mist.

He is quickly enshrouded. All he can see is dark blue-gray nothing. But he can feel Dean, somewhere just ahead.

Behind him he hears howls, and snarling, the sounds of pursuit.

He keeps a mantra in his head. _Save Dean, save Dean, Deandeandean_.

Closer and closer he gets, until….

No.

Dean's behind him.

He retreats. He does a circle. Dean's _here_, he can _feel_ it.

He stops.

Right here.

Dean should be right here. Sam looks down. There's ground under his feet, not lithified souls. He looks up. Just more gray.

"What the…what am I supposed to do?" He says into the fog. There's no response. The mist muffles the sounds of pursuit. There's nothing.

"WHAT AM I SUPPOSED TO DO?"

He drops to his knees. He starts clawing at the ground, digging. His fingernails break and his skin scraps raw, but he keeps digging. He piles the dirt, which is really more like compacted ashes, on the sides.

The hole gets deep, fast. It's knee deep before he stops. There's something there, or, an absence of something. Another cave.

He digs further. He doesn't fall through, like with the cave in the ice. When there's a hole large enough for him to fit through, he climbs down.

It's dark, but there's light coming from below. Sam can't see any ground, but there are chain links crisscrossing into the darkness around him.

He grabs one, to slide down it. Far away into the dark there's a scream of pain. It's a familiar voiced scream.

"DEAN!" yells Sam. There's no response.

He tries another chain, which doesn't elicit the same pained response. Sam wishes his heart was beating. With the thrill that's passing through him, the absence of adrenaline and shaking and racing heart makes climbing onto the chain seem unreal, like a dream that fades except for the intense emotions.

He wraps his legs around the chain, and starts to slide down it like a sloth. The deeper he gets the more his eyes adjust. The chamber is big, but not as big as he though. It looks like it goes on forever, but when he looks up, the hole looks like it's hanging in space. It's like a pocket of reality separate from everything else.

And in the center is Dean.

He looks…unchanged. He's wearing the same gray shirt and blue jeans. There's blood, a lot of it, and the chains hook into Dean like he's in a meat locker.

The hooks are in Dean. He's crucified in mid-air.

Sam gags, and he knows if he were in his body he would have blown chinks right there. He can slide to within reach of his brother.

"Dean!" He yells. There's no response.

Dean's eyes are open, staring, but he's not really seeing anything that's there. Sam slides to right above Dean, and lets go with his hands, dangling by his feet. He reaches out and grabs Dean's shoulder, careful not to touch anywhere near the hooks.

"Dean, Dean, can you hear me? Come on man, wake up," he pleads. He gives Dean a shake. He groans in pain, but doesn't even blink.

"Dean, it's Sam. I'm here to get you out but I need your help."

Sam grabs a chain loop from nearby with one hand. He tries to maneuver it around Dean's head. When he's sure the chain will support at least part of Dean he starts to pull out the hooks. The more hooks he pulls free, the more Dean's screams of pain become more…himself.

"I'm sorry, Dean," Sam says, whispering a litany of apologies and tries for comfort at the pain he knows he's causing.

The going is long, but eventually, upside down and starting to feel aches that were never there before, Sam wrenches Dean free from the last hook. Blood spurts into his face.

Dean gasps. He coughs. Sam grabs him around his middle, to keep him still and to keep him from falling.

"Don't move Dean, don't move," he says.

Dean looks at him.

Eyes that he hasn't seen in four years look into his own, and actually see him. Not the dead, lifeless eyes that stared into nothing when Dean died, and again when Sam just found him.

"Sammy?"

Dean's voice is raw and gravelly.

"Oh man, is it good to hear your voice, Dean," says Sam.

"Sammy, I…."

"Don't talk, Dean, come on, we need to get out of here." Dean's arms don't quite work, or much of anything, for that matter. Like a coma patient, it's like he's atrophied and doesn't really have control.

Dean can't stop staring at Sam. It would unnerve Sam, if he didn't feel the same way. If he didn't feel like he had to get _out_ _now_, he would be wasting time being in awe too. But as it went he has to focus on climbing the twenty or so feet up to the tiny opening and getting Dean to the surface.

Now that Dean's back to himself, though, and gaining control that he hasn't had in four years, he starts moving. Sam helps him up to the chain he's on, only further up, and slowly they make their way up.

Dean's shaking, and it send tremors through the chains, but somehow he hangs on.

Sam practically shoves Dean through the opening. The chains are swinging, so getting any sort of leverage means Sam has to slide down the chain and scramble for purchase.

Then they're topside.

Dean's staring at Sam like he's the second coming, still, which, Sam thinks, he is except that it didn't take three days for him to rise from the dead. All it took was Dean.

Sam grabs onto Dean and pulls him into a hug. Tears build in his eyes but don't fall.

"Sammy," says Dean, still in the quiet, rasping voice. "Please tell me you're not dead."

"Nope, just on a rescue mission."

Dean shakes with a laugh. Neither of them are ready to let the other go.

"Took you long enough. Wait, how long has it been? A year?"

"It's been four, Dean." Sam pulls away. "And you're not out of Hell yet. We have to move."

He grabs Dean's arm and pulls him, in the direction he thinks the Lawrence rip might be. He knows he feels a draw towards something, like a slight current from a drain.

"Aw, Sammy, I get all tingly when you take control like that!"

Sam stops. He looks back at Dean.

"What?" Says Dean.

"You've said that before," says Sam.

"What? When?" Says Dean. "Was it a Tuesday?"

Sam thinks back, over the hundreds of Tuesdays, back to a time when Dean was dead, died every day, and now he's standing here, with Dean. He grins.

"Time to get you out of here," says Sam. "This way."

Sam leads him towards the source of the drain.

"How do you know it's this way? You got, like, a GPS in that brain of yours, college boy?"

"You can't feel the drain?" asks Sam.

"What drain?"

"There's a cemetery in Lawrence—Stull Cemetery. It's a doorway to and from Hell."

"Like Wyoming?"

"Yeah, only this one's open all the time. I think it's how Meg keeps getting free."

Dean's stumbling along as best he can and Sam feels guilty for pushing him forward. He's limping heavily, leaving a trail of blood on the gray dirt behind them.

"We're being followed," says Sam. Howls and screams and groans follow them, dogging their heels, getting ever closer.

"Well no shit," says Dean.

But up ahead Sam can see light.

He pulls Dean along, speeding to a jog and then an all out run. He turns his head to look behind them. Through the mist he can see shadows, figures, chasing them. He pushes Dean ahead.

"Go, Dean, don't look back!"

And of course Dean looks back, and Sam wouldn't have expected anything different. He can see the rift in the universe right ahead of them. There's a tear, and through it he can see the inside of a church.

He glances back and there's a demon. There's a phantom with a cheshire-cat smile and a girl with a pair of scissors. There's an entire mob of things, things that he sent here and things that want to keep Dean with them, in hell, and Sam hopes to God that Bobby and Calvin and Ellen at least had the sense to draw a seal of soloman around the opening.

Hell, he hopes they're even there, and that decades or centuries haven't passed while he was here, or that it's only been minutes.

He feels claws in his leg, in his back. He stumbles.

The light is so close—Dean's through. He's falling—then he's through, and it all goes black.

Like a bang, black, nothing, desolation, then like the speed of light the universe is there again, and snaps into place around him.

He's gasping, breathing, trying to draw in more air because he can't get enough of it.

He's staring upwards. There's the wooden, decaying ceiling of a church.

The ground is stone and digs into his back.

He sits up, like an electric shock has pumped through him.

"Whoa, there, Sammy," says someone next to him. Bobby. There are hands on his back, holding him up and steady.

Calvin's crouched in front of him, swimming in and out of focus.

"Are you okay, Sam?"

"Where's—where's Dean?"

Calvin looks at him, eyebrows creased upwards and sad.

"You're the only one that came through, Sam," says Bobby.

"We've been here for a week. Nothing else has come out," Calvin tells him. "There was just you."

Sam turns back, searching for the rip in the world.

There's nothing.

"Where was the doorway?"

Bobby helps Sam to his feet. "There wasn't one. You just sort of fell out of nothing, like dumping black soot everywhere, and you went into your body."

"No," says Sam. "That's not right. Dean was ahead of me. Where…."

"_Dude, what have you done to my car?_"

Sam starts. He sees Bobby and Calvin freeze. He runs outside. The impala is parked next to the church. The cemetery's run down, ancient. There aren't any new grave markers.

"Dean?"

They look all around them. There's no one.

"_I'm right here, Sammy._"

"We can't see you, Dean, you're…fuck."

"He doesn't have a body to go back to, so he's just a spirit?" Asks Bobby.

"Dean, are you going to…you know, pass on? Like dad," says Sam.

There's silence.

"Dean?"

The impala's horn honks twice.

Sam narrows his eyes. "You've got to be kidding me, Dean."

The horn honks again. The engine turns over, and the car rumbles to life. The speakers blare, "_Lord I was born a ramblin' man…._"

"You're serious? The car?"

"Dude, that's so cool," says Calvin, and Sam glares at him.

"What should we do about this?" Bobby gestures at the church.

"Demons can get out of there," says Sam, eyes still on the impala. "We need to devil's trap it, keep them all contained, at least.

They draw it in paint, because that's the best they can come up with on short notice, but Sam vows to himself to come up with a more permanent solution.

Dean's not in Hell anymore.

Sam can relax, just a little. Not a lot, but a little.

Dean's not in Hell anymore.

They leave Kansas, head north to Bobby's. Sam can't get rid of that feeling, like when a movie ends and the ending doesn't quite satisfy. There's an uneasy feeling settling in his stomach.

There's a scar in the world where Dean used to be. The hole's gone. There's still a mark but Sam thinks he can live with it. Dean's not in Hell and he's not as _there_ as Sam wishes, but like Calvin says, "If wishes were horses we'd all be eating steak." Dean can sometimes tap into the radio waves to speak, if awkwardly, and unclear. Calvin calls Dean "Bumblebee" and laughs when Dean responds with the threat of AC/DC's _If You Want Blood (You Got It)_, and shakes his head in disgust when Sam asks why.

_Just how disconnected from the world are you, Sammy?_

So Dean's dead, but there, in a way, and in a way that makes life almost bearable. They'll both pass on someday. Sam will burn the Impala, or Calvin if Sam dies young, or Bobby or anyone else.

It's not perfect, but Dean was in Hell for four years, eleven days, nine hours and twelve minutes (_not that Sam was counting_), and now he's free.

Sam looks out past the horizon and sees future now instead of past.

He drops Calvin off in Westminster, Colorado, a month after he first picked the kid up. He's jealous, a bit, that Calvin's going to try to have a normal life, but he knows Calvin never will and he's reconciled himself with that. He's a hunter.

He always will be.

He liked Calvin fine, but in the end he doesn't fit, and never would have.

Sam leaves him contact info, because he knows, somewhere down the road, normal wont work. It never does.

But when he gets back on the road and it's just him and Dean and the impala, the silence doesn't feel so much like death anymore.

Just him and his brother and the open road.

Fin.


End file.
